Mass Timber Market Updates - May 2024 - Week Nineteen

Can mass timber construction reshape our cities while addressing climate change and social inequality? This week on the Mass Timber Construction Podcast, we explore groundbreaking architectural designs that promise just that. From Henning Larsen’s awe-inspiring rowing club with its green sloping roof to Stephen Holl Architects’ innovative Expo Albania convention center featuring cross-laminated timber and eco-friendly features, these projects exemplify the future of sustainable architecture. Both structures showcase how timber can seamlessly integrate with nature and urban environments, offering sophisticated solutions for modern challenges.

Join us as we celebrate notable achievements, including Jim Taggart receiving the RAIC Architectural Journalism and Media Award for his remarkable contributions to sustainable architecture and timber construction. We’ll also uncover the visionary redevelopment plan for downtown Seattle by the Georgia Tech team, which won a major urban design competition by addressing post-COVID challenges, social inequality, and climate change with a focus on mass timber. This episode is packed with inspiration and cutting-edge advancements that will keep you at the forefront of architectural innovation. Don’t miss out on these transformative stories and concepts!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Ladies and gentlemen, we are live. This is the moment you all have been waiting for. It's time for the global sensation, the one, the only, the undisputed heavyweight podcast in the world, the Mass Timber Construction Podcast. And now here's Mark Cranmer, your host. Good morning, good afternoon or good evening wherever you are in the world today. Welcome to the Mass Timber Construction Podcast. My name's Paul Cranmer, your host, bringing you the news from all around the world in Mass Timber Construction land, heading into May, and it is starting to get warmer in the northern hemisphere and it's starting to get a lot cooler here in the southern hemisphere. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button and thank you once again, bruce Buffer, the veteran voice of the octagon, for doing the intro for our podcast. Let's have a look at what's making news around the world this week.

Speaker 1: 1:20

In mass timber construction land, global architecture firm Henning Larsen has designed a rowing club defined by a green sloping roof, a timber structure that celebrates the area in which it's situated, with a harmonious dialogue between structure and its waterfront setting. The design approach was deeply rooted in landscape and the culture of the region. The sloping green roof and the timber facade pay a homage to the surrounding materials and the beauty, nodding to the traditional architecture of the location in which it is located. The 620 square meter timber structure with the studio has been designed with the celebration of the sports heritage that was topped in the serrated roof with transitions to sloping green roofs towards the building's rear. The wooden deck ramps up to the structure's base, providing views outward towards the fjord and the surrounding landscape. If you'd like to see some impressive images from Dazeem, you can head to our Mass Timber Construction Journal LinkedIn feed. And heading to New York now. And the firm firm stephen hole architects has won a design competition for the expo albania, a convention center in tarana. The design of the center was arrived at in collaboration with a polish artist and it forms, at the end of a signature, the little squiggly form of a written signature modelled in the building using cross-laminated timber roof structures, the blue line that ran around the building and will then compile all the signatures of the residents from the Albanian capital. Among the building's green features, it has geothermal heating and cooling, solar shingles to generate electricity, skylight that can darken for events and a reflecting pool with recycled water and acoustic buffers made from earth. Congratulations to Stephen Hull and the design team, which included Atelier 4, atelier Markgraf, stoss and Arup. If you'd like to see the winning entry, please head to our Mass Timber Construction Journal LinkedIn feed.

Speaker 1: 3:27

And many years after Jim Taggart left architectural practice in 1993 to pursue a parallel interest in writing, editing and education, he started as a freelance writer whose byline soon became a regular fixture in various professional trade magazines. In 2002, he was appointed as the contributing editor by both Canadian Architect and Wood Design and Building magazines, by both Canadian Architect and Wood Design and Building Magazines. When publisher Don Griffith left Wood Design and Building in 2005, he and Taggart conceived a new publication by growing Canadian Green Building Movement. Sustainable Architecture and Building Magazine began in 2006 with Taggart as a founding editor. Well, now, in 2024, he's received the RAIC Architectural Journalism and Media Award. Congratulations to you, jim. An illustrious career writing for such an important element to our built environment the facets of sustainability, and it's good to see you have an interest in timber. To the USs now.

Speaker 1: 4:32

And a georgia tech team wins the urban design competition. The ideas contest gives graduate students with an opportunity to devise a comprehensive design and development scheme for a large-scale site in an urban area. The contest this year focused on the redevelopment of a site in Seattle, with the winning team receiving $50,000,. The remaining three finalist teams will receive $10,000 each. The team from Georgia Institute Technology Students has taken top honors in the 22nd version of this. The winning plan from Georgia Tech, titled Mender, is a vision for part of the downtown Seattle area, designed to address challenges posed by the post-COVID environment, social inequality and climate change. Ultimately, mender was selected due to its unique circulation concept, mid-rise building massing and an all-in approach to mass timber construction. While mass timber is still in its early stages, the team was well-versed and researched on the subject matter, presenting an aspirational yet achievable project. Congratulations to the team and it's great to see mass timber making a four in construction in competitions that have been around for a lot longer than the technology has.

Speaker 1: 5:48

And we have talked about the Hive in in Vancouver, which is at 2105 Keith Drive. Well, we've got some images from April. Construction first began with the excavation in spring 2002 and, as of last month, has progressed to the first two mass timber floors above the first level concrete platform or podium. The building is amongst Vancouver's first examples of taller, large-scale mass timber construction. If you'd like to see some progress photos, you can go straight to our LinkedIn feed and see them. Fantastic work by everybody.

Speaker 1: 6:24

To Australia now, and a new carbon negative library is in a place called Jindabyne in the Snowy Mountains, which combines two natural materials for assembly systems that connect the building with its mountain lakeside location. The stone plinth reflects the mountain's granite and the local vernacular grounding the building to the mountain and suspended above this platform, is interlocked series of precise prefabricated CLT elements. The structure and the finish source from local timber. The lofty interior design of the library is formed by the geometry of the timber structure itself. If you'd like to check out photos on the project, please head to the mass timber construction journal linkedin feed.

Speaker 1: 7:08

And that's it, folks. That's all we've got time for this week in mass timber construction land. We hope you had an amazing week. We look forward to catching up with you in the very near future, in fact next week, and we'll bring you more news from around the world on this global platform for mass timber construction. Don't forget coming up very, very soon. I'm doing some global research. You'll get more details about that coming through the journal feed. If you do have a manuscript and you'd like it to be submitted to the international mass timber construction journal, please send it through to us. Mass timber constructioncom. Mass timber constructioncom. And if you have any news for social media, please send it to us via our linkedin feed, and we look forward to catching up with you very, very soon. Good morning, good afternoon or good evening, wherever you are in the world. Today, this is Paul Kramer signing off on the Mass Timber Construction Podcast. Thank you,