Mass Timber Group Show: Sustainable Building Experts

Trending in Timber: Google Headquarters + 55-Story Mass Timber Tower

• Brady & Nic

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From Google’s stunning mass timber headquarters to a groundbreaking 55-story development in Milwaukee, we explore how mass timber is revolutionizing the AEC industry. We tackle common misconceptions about fire safety, deforestation, and carbon impact, highlighting key innovations and real-world examples. Whether you're curious about timber's role in combating climate change or want insights into the latest industry trends, this episode covers it all. Tune in for a fresh look at mass timber’s growing influence in the construction world.

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Speaker 1:

Well, it's game time.

Speaker 2:

What are you?

Speaker 1:

wearing. You're not ready.

Speaker 2:

I don't have my steel-toed shoes, but it looks like you're going to have to change a diaper.

Speaker 1:

Now what this is, folks, is a. This is a new trend. What we want to tell you and what we want to educate, what we want to spotlight, is real world projects. What's happening out there it my linkedin is a flood of mass timber projects throughout the world. There might as well be 30 to 40 to 50 to 60 projects. I can even just show you right now, just because it becomes overwhelming. So what this is is a spotlight of just what's happening in the world of mass timber.

Speaker 2:

And so one of the things that we're trying to do here is just share what's going on, like Nick said, but then also give you guys the tools to be informed, to be educated, to be up to date on what's going on, like Nick said, but then also give you guys the tools to be informed, to be educated, to be up to date on what's going on in mass timber. We're going to be doing these on a pretty frequent basis, so if there's anything you guys want us to talk about, shoot it our way. We got a couple of pretty impressive projects that we're going to talk about today, and I'll let Nick jump into the first one.

Speaker 1:

So this is the fun part about this game we don't know what projects are going to come into play, because all we're doing is scrolling and just letting you know some of these really cool headlines, some of these really cool titles. One thing, though, that I saw recently that started jumping out at me was the Google headquarters that Michael green architecture created and designed. This just unfolded, just kind of speed through a couple of these pictures. This is in Sunnyvale, california, completed. It's stunning. Clearly, this is Michael Green is the best around when it comes to one of the best around.

Speaker 2:

One of the things that I think you're seeing a big trend of and it's not new to anybody in the industry but, like, all of these huge mega corporations are going all in on mass timber. So we're talking about Google, obviously, but everybody knows about what's happening down in Arkansas Walmart's big focus on sustainability. You're going to hear things from Facebook and Meta YouTube. All these big corporations are going on mass timber and there's a reason for it, but these types of projects really help bring mass timber into the light.

Speaker 1:

There's no doubt about it. I say this repeatedly there's a silent tidal wave sweeping across America and Canada and North America and nobody knows about it, unless you're ingrained into the construction industry, unless you're an engineer, a GC, a builder, a contractor, unless that you're doing these large-scale projects. It's now a conversation, so this always stuck with me. I'm on the Colorado Mass Timber Coalition Executive Board, executive Committee that's a little, not to get a little ahead of myself there and Greg Kingsley, the CEO and president of KL&A Engineers and Builders, out here in Denver and Golden, colorado.

Speaker 1:

We were talking about the difference between now and just about three or four years ago. He said the difference now is we look at about five to 600 projects a year. Five or 600 projects a year, just look at it. Obviously they don't do five or 600. They look at seriously to see if they will do it. And I'm going to butcher the statistic, but he said there might as well have been like 25,.

Speaker 1:

50% was no words about mass timber. Nothing was ever said, nothing was ever whispered. Now, nine out of 10, nine out of 10 projects, so basically 80, 90% of every single project that this one, you know, engineer Greg Kingsley and KLNA. So that's one. Now extrapolate that over all engineers the conversation is being had and these projects is what we're trying to show. So here's a little bit of um. Hey, google, search on the web for Google mass timber buildings and this is what you'll come up with. Here's the team Michael Green Architecture, kin Saul Mercer, sarah Architects, equilibrium, elevated Construction Services, xl Construction, global Flooring, rotoblos Holmes, us Simpson, strong Thai and Emma was the photographer. I mean, there there's you, imagine having that team.

Speaker 2:

That's like a pretty star seven lineup right there. Like you're, you got a lot of the big players, uh, if you're going to hear in the mass timber industry, uh, but it's, it's Google, so that's, it doesn't surprise you on that front. Um, but what I think does happen when these flagship projects come out, because Google is Google right, they have an extraordinary amount of press, and so it kind of like brings mass timber into the mainstream, if you will, especially with platforms like Google and YouTube and Facebook or meta, I guess now, which kind of tees into one of the things that I want to talk about is kind of like media coverage and talking points around mass timber, because, like there's, like you said, it's a tidal wave that nobody really sees or hears unless you're in the know and you're in the industry, and so when you talk about, oh, we're building these crazy awesome buildings with timber, people have like a lot of objections around it. Like people are like, what about fire, what about carbon, what about trees? And so the project that I saw that caught my eye this week was back in milwaukee, and so everybody knows about milwaukee, the mass timber industry, because of the ascent, you know, one of the tallest timber towers in north america, and so I think an hour outside of chicago yeah, exactly, and so, um, that was gokman right tim, yeah yes, yeah, tim gokman

Speaker 2:

so, and then everybody's been talking about, like the Edison, another taller timber tower. But this one, again from Michael Green, came across my inbox this morning so I wanted to share a little bit about it. So this is actually going to be 55 stories, so 600 feet, yeah. So there's been a lot of skepticism around going tall with mass timber. There's a lot of concerns around going this tall. I know we just I actually don't know if it's come out yet, but we talked to Anthony Wood and Lloyd Alter Where's the spot for mass timber in, like these vertical high rises?

Speaker 2:

And so there's people with different opinions on whether we should go this high or not. But the fact remains that people are looking at doing this and so, like, the more it just goes back to like that Google thing, like the more attention that gets on mass timber, the more it gets in people's minds, the more it becomes part of the conversation, just like you were just talking about with Greg and yeah, and this, this stat right here. I just pulled a couple of clips out from the article. So a $700 million project, 55 stories, 600 feet tall, and it'll be roughly 90% timber.

Speaker 1:

I can't imagine how thick these columns have to be. I know, like with the ascent it had to I don't know exactly what it was, but basically, like if a column was, you know in the international building code here's, here's what the size it needs to be for this specific project, I think they had to like double or triple the size of their you know the width, just so the char layer and the fire won't race in as fast yeah, and that's that's one of the criticisms around going tall with uh, timbers like your columns and your structural systems just have to become so massive.

Speaker 2:

Um, and then like, but doing those kind of projects and I think it was the ascent, I could be putting my foot in my mouth here but they had to do a more intense fire burn char study to get it approved. I believe it was a three hour one. That might've been timber lab, let me. Let me check on that really quick.

Speaker 1:

I think you're right. I think that wasn't, as timber lab was an association with Tim Gawkman with oh dang it.

Speaker 2:

Now I need to look up so timber lab did do a three hour glulam column fire test rating, uh, for the ascent specifically. So, like every time you're pushing boundaries, like new testing, new innovations is coming through, which is super exciting. Um well, I encourage people to go check out the article. Timber lab has a whole piece on it. Look, look at that chart rating, and you know. So they had to go through and prove that mass timber is doable with a three hour rating, whereas previously everybody was looking at it too.

Speaker 2:

But this kind of pivots directly into some of the comments which I thought were super interesting on this article. So this article is from CNN. It quotes very heavily from Michael Green. It's not very long, it kind of just touches on the details of it. But in there there was a section called why mass or why timber, and so in there they just like very briefly talk about, you know, the building industry's carbon footprint and then how timber can help with it. But they didn't really go into the weeds very much Like the gist of the article was tree store carbon.

Speaker 2:

That was kind of like the takeaway from that. And so when you go into the comment section, I wasn't expecting to see this, but maybe I should have. This is what the comment section looks like. So it's all about fire and deforestization. It's like towering inferno, wood plus fire, not good. And then you know cutting down an entire forest to build this building, all that kind of stuff and it kind of. I think one thing, nick, that we see a lot because we talk with everybody in the industry, is like we just kind of take the answers around these questions for granted. So it's like mass timber equals burning building. It's like no mass timber can meet the same fire codes and ratings that other structural material can meet, as just evidenced by those tests that we just put up from Timber Lab in the ascent. But other people don't know that right, and so when people just think you're going to build a tower out of wood, it's just going to burn down.

Speaker 1:

It's what it is. It's just, it's pure ignorance, Like it's what you don't know is you don't know. It's the unknown. Unknown because it's just a. It's a two-minute conversation about sustainable forest management. Um, forests are a living creature, just like us. We're gonna die, we're gonna be born and we're gonna die. With a forest, same exact thing. Just think of trees and those sweeping fires come in and they burn so hot because the forests are overgrown with deadfall and what that creates is just these fire loads that are unbelievable.

Speaker 1:

I can speak on this just a little bit. I was a firefighter for a decade. I got the proof in the back, I got my firefighter helmet up there. But the point is we can make our forest healthier by mechanically thinning the trees, and what that means is we're not. We're not devastating legacy forest. Nobody's going into the Redwood forest in California and chopping down that tree that you can drive a car through. It's not what's going on. And and it's it's laughable because because you're right, we're. We're so ingrained in it and sides of my family are in the lumber world and so maybe we take it for granted. But the point is it has a life and if you want it to go up in smoke, sit back and watch the California fires take over. I was just talking to one of them. Well, you know Kale Rice in Missoula. He said it was raining ash two days ago. You had to take your, your six-week-old daughter to the hospital because the ash and the smoke was so bad. You're in missoula, I'm yeah, it's like this.

Speaker 2:

I'm looking outside right now it's kind of storming slash trying to rain, but over the last couple days, like I don't think there's been more than a mile of visibility here and that's just from forest fires burning out of control, right. So like there's solutions to help address this. But like pivoting back to like the building side of things, I think one of the misconceptions and I certainly had this before I got into this world is it's like, oh, what fire safe or fire codes for buildings? It's like it's not designed to prevent buildings from burning down necessarily. It's designed to give you enough time to get out of the buildings before, structurally, they come down, and so that's why you have the two, three hour burn ratings. Right, because like concrete and steel, same thing, like you have to has to be able to withstand a fire for that long before something catastrophic happens.

Speaker 1:

And but timber, mass timber specifically can do those same exact things um, and the reason being is because it's a solid piece of wood and there's no air on the inside. You know, it's not a kindling box, it's not a match box, it's a solid piece of wood. And if you've ever gone camping if you haven't, you're really missing out. But if you've ever gone camping overnight and you've put a massive, big, big round log in the fire, it burns all night and and half of it's left in the morning. Same exact concept this fire is creating a char layer, a charcoal layer which insulates the inside of the timber and it and it create and it keeps it strong and it gives you the time to take its time to burn outside in, whereas, like it doesn't reach a certain temperature and just you know, folds or cracks.

Speaker 1:

All buildings catch on fire, like it's. It's the contents that are inside. All of these books are made out of paper, like it's going to go up, but is the structure, when it's 50 stories tall in Milwaukee, or the ascent that it's 25 stories, I believe. It's six stories of concrete on 19 stories of 100% mass timber, which is incredible, but it gives you time to get out of the building. And so, that being said, I know I want to show you this one thing because it's just it's unreal If you don't want to go big.

Speaker 2:

So, while you're pulling that up, so it's like these talking points, so like, specifically around fire and deforestation, like these are things that we as a community or as an industry really need to be educated and be able to talk about really quickly, like elevator conversation style stuff. Like, yes, you're going to be able to sit down with an architect or an engineer or developer, whoever, and like get into the weeds. But I run into this all the time, where people are like what do you do? And I tell them about mass timber and the first question is, like isn't it going to burn down? Like what do you mean? You're cutting down more trees for this. And so keep this in mind. Like have these talking points like the summarization of like where we're at and what it means for fire and for forest deforestation. I've got some resources for people and some stats.

Speaker 1:

So just to give you an idea, here's, you know, thinkwoodcom, but here's a real world test case. During a fire resistant test of a five ply cross laminated timber CLT panel wall, the panel was subjected to temperatures exceeding 1800 degrees Fahrenheit and lasted three hours and six minutes, far more than the two hour rating that building codes require.

Speaker 2:

On the deforestation side of things. I wanted to kind of like address a few things from a few different books I've read. So the first book I'm looking at is Forever Green the History and Hope of the American Forest, by Chuck Lovell. He's the keyboardist for the Rolling Stones but also a tree farmer. We actually did a podcast with him, like one of the first ones we did I think I think it was number three or something like that.

Speaker 2:

But in this book I highlighted a couple of things. So basically he talks about, like when the earliest pioneers came, there were about a billion acres of forest land and this book was written in 2001. He said now American forests cover about a third of the country, so 749 million acres. And so you can say, well, did we lose 25% of the forest? Yeah, you did temporarily. But we also built a population of 300 million people across those years. But here's, here's the, here's the fun thing. Um, so, so highly recommend everybody read this book too.

Speaker 2:

And if you want a history of the forest and how mass timber plays into it, like, check out this book Designing the Forest. It's by Lindsay Wickstrom. We also interviewed her as well. Incredible architect that kind of went into the forest story and what mass timber means for that. Moving forward but pivoting back to like how much forest we actually have right now. So in the International Mass Timber Report for 2024, if you guys don't have it like, definitely get, I think it's like a hundred bucks online right now or if you went to the international mass timber conference, you get a PDF for free.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, they, they give it to you for free. It's in Portland. Go to the international mass timber conference. It's like drinking from the fire hose. It's the global stage like drinking from the fire hose.

Speaker 2:

It's the global stage, it's unbelievable, yes. And so in this report they talk about a couple of key things. So they talk about the state of the forest for North America and Canada or, excuse me, the United States and Canada, but right here. So the total forested area increased from 766 million acres in the 2012, which is about 15 million more than was in 2001, according to the figure cited by Chuck, up to 822 million in the most recent assessment. So from 2001 to now, we've added about 90 million acres to the forest, and so we're back to 82% of the forest that we had when, before everybody started cutting things down to build the country that we live in.

Speaker 2:

When people are looking at, are we losing forests? The other thing to think about and to know is this term right here, growth to drain, right? So it's basically a fancy metric of how much forests are being replenished versus how much we're taking out of them, and so it's a. It's a ratio. If it's above one, it means we're positive, the forests are growing despite harvest allowance. If it's, if it's below one, then we're losing forests.

Speaker 2:

And if you look at all of these softwoods, hardwoods, all species whatever, every single one of these are above one, which means the forests are continuously growing, and the same holds true for Canada, and so we are constantly replenishing our forests, and some of the stats that I saw I think it was from the Forest Service it's like almost 2% surplus a year versus what's being harvested, so it's like we're not running out of trees. The trees and the forests are growing. What we're doing is we're replacing carbon intensive materials that are not renewable with a renewable resource that stores carbon. No, it's not perfect, right. It's not a completely carbon neutral or carbon negative product, like there's still emissions that go into building this. But it's like what evil are you choosing? Are you choosing open pit mines or replanting forests, right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, oh yeah, we're stripping 50 billion tons of sand from the earth every annually to produce the built world 50 billion. It's like, how sustainable? Is that again that mountain that you just removed? Or, hey, maybe let's go. Let's go harvest this small diameter tree and replant it, and then we're going to walk away because it's an, it's natural and it's actually it's solar, it's solar powered, so the sun and then oh yeah oh yeah, can you plug your? Driveway to carbon.

Speaker 2:

You know, yeah, it's like yeah, no, it's, but these are. These are the things that other people that aren't in the know have questions about, right and so like when we can talk about these things and I think that's why it's important for people that are in the industry to be advocates for it. You know, outside of your daily work, like tell people that you know about mass timber, and when they say, what about fire, what about defore, like you can talk confidently around these topics.

Speaker 1:

This is what always blows my mind. This is called 8billiontreescom and we're going to go down to some specifics here. Tree planting location North America. How many trees were planted in 2022? 10 million. Almost 11 million. Number of trees planted 10 years ago 12 million trees, and this is a list of. Here's the table that shows the approximate number of trees Some major countries plant around the world. It ranks these trees from those that plant the most to the least. United States, 10th. Look at this. China's planting 2 billion trees themselves. This is annual stuff. It's unbelievable.

Speaker 2:

India, ethiopia that's not to say that some areas and countries aren't doing the right thing in sustainably managing forests. Where mass timber is getting sourced from, you can look at, hey, is this coming from a sustainably managed forest? Like you can go look at how the forest service manages for us. If it's coming off public land, you can look at independent FSC, sfi certifications and like. There are organizations that check and document these kinds of things to make sure that those concerns aren't aren't happening.

Speaker 1:

So I want to show this real quick. I was just talking to Trent depth about this on the phone. Uh, Trent depth is the vice president and founder of timber builder, Um, and they're they're a mass timber installer. Anyways, we were just kind of talking about how fast the world is moving and then like the pinnacle of what the ultra rich are doing versus what also regular people are doing. So this is just a quick comparison to show you the unbelievable, the difference in scale between the ultra rich and also somebody that can build a house on their own. So this is Aura. This is in Aspen, Colorado. This is Ski In, Ski Out on Snowmass. This is the project right here on the left. So just all mass timber, mass timber, not all but mass timber CLT. Anyways, what I wanted to show you here's real world images. It's being finished and completed right now. I believe this is a KLNA Yep, KLNA engineers and builders, and I believe the construction crew is Sounders S-a-u-n-d-e-r-s but I'm not sure I think it is, but here's what.

Speaker 1:

Here's what's gonna blow your mind. So you go to zillow. They're all sold out, by the way. Here's here's. Here's what. Here's what it was listed at on zillow 11 million for a condo, for For 2,796 square feet, all right, so $11,175,000.

Speaker 2:

What's the $11 million divided by 2,976 or whatever, for the cost per square foot?

Speaker 1:

$3,934 a square foot. That's the sell price of the square foot, almost $4,000 a square foot. I listed my house here in Denver, my town home a couple months ago. It was like $499 a square foot, which was the, which was the average for this area. It's stupid. It's like the top 10 richest in the, I mean, and the most expensive in America. It's stupid.

Speaker 1:

But now I'm going to show you a real world. I mean, this is just gorgeous. Obviously. I mean, give me a break, ski in, ski out. I'd be snowboarding, me and my wife would. But all right, so check this out. So this is Vagen Timbers and this is the Tom Bon House. Tom Bon is one of the salesman managers out there for Vagen Timbers. Great guy, awesome to have a beer with. He's got background wrestler. He's just a good old boy, small town, mountain town guy. We resonate Me and you are both born and raised in small town Montana, but I flew out to this house, vagan Timbers completed this and I talked to Tom Bond himself about the specifics of what happened here. This is a 2,650 square foot single family residence and he spent about a half a million dollars, so about $500,000 for this home. So if you take, do? I do 2,650 first and then divide.

Speaker 2:

So do you 500,000 divided by 2,650? I'll give you the price per square foot.

Speaker 1:

So 500,000 divide 2,650 square feet, that's $188 a square foot build price. And no, he GC'd this himself. So there was some savings that he was able to achieve. But this is just a. This is a beautiful custom home and when I walked in it there I'm not joking it felt like a million dollar custom home all day long. It's just a stunning, really, really cool thing. So, anyways, this is Vog and Timbers. I think they completed this and topped it out in five days. Here's a quick little fun note North American Forest grew this much wood in 24 seconds.

Speaker 1:

This project kept 190 metric tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere. This is the equivalent of keeping 40 cars off the road or providing clean power for 37 houses. And I'll shut up after this. But the reason why is because, again, carbon is stored within the tree's wooden fiber through a process called carbon sequestration. So when these timber panels are dried, 50% of the dry weight is carbon. So for the life cycle of this project, call it 50 years, 100 years if it's 150 years, you're storing carbon instead of using it. And anyways, I mean, there's Japanese temples that are what? Almost 2,000 years old and made out of timber. It's just all about how you upkeep it it. I don't know how you guys like this. This is what jacks me up.

Speaker 1:

I I love seeing what the future of building and construction is doing, especially in mass timber. It's the only form of sustainable construction we have at scale period. So if you take a look at what the government's doing, do you think that they're going to make it a little bit harder to build more energy? You know they want more energy efficient buildings and they want more buildings that don't use such a carbon footprint. This is the answer I think we're going to. We're going to start doing these about once a week and just release what the top headlines are, what we think is cool. We love feedback. Let us know what you see. If you have a really cool project, put it in the comments.

Speaker 2:

We'll check it up and we love you yeah, like nick said, like tell us what's cool, what we, what we need to see and what we need to talk about, and if there's anything you guys can help you out with to have these kind of conversations like, let us know, we'll point you in the right direction see on the flip side.

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Brady Potts

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Nic Wilson

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