Browsing: Mass Timber

A Houston project plans to achieve two firsts: the city’s first mass timber commercial office project, and the state of Texas’s first commercial office building targeting net zero energy operational carbon upon completion next year. Framework at Block 10 is owned and managed by Hicks Ventures, a Houston-based development company.

The AEC industry is ever evolving. In the search for more sustainable solutions in construction, mass timber continues to take hold. As a central feature of a building’s aesthetic—and perhaps of the owner’s commitment to environmental stewardship—mass timber is notable and noticeable, and is actively challenging traditional building methods. Is it the next step in improving the built world?

The rise of mass timber usage on projects in the US Northeast is a trend that is here to stay due to the material’s ability to respond to the construction industry’s impact on climate change while satisfying designers’ appetite for biophilic building solutions. Like the specialized engineering expertise required to deliver custom wall systems, complex mass timber projects comprised of glulam, cross-laminated timber (CLT), etc. lend themselves to early-award, design-assist bid packages. We thought we would share some key lessons learned from our experience selecting a glulam partner early in the preconstruction phase.

From the embodied carbon associated with construction materials to the operational carbon produced throughout a building’s lifecycle, the design and construction industry has the opportunity to make a big impact when it comes to carbon.

Cross laminated timber, or CLT, traces its origins to advances in wood processing and fabrication about 30 years ago in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

Buildings, construction, and building materials account for nearly 40% of global carbon emissions. As the world continues the search for sustainable solutions to
the collective carbon challenge, the AEC industry has turned back to a traditional building material: wood.