by Web Editor | Dec 2, 2016 | News
The seven-story T3 tower features 220,000 square feet of prefabricated CLT timber panels and nail-laminated timber cladding.
It became the largest timber building in the U.S. when it opened Wednesday in Minneapolis. Designed by Vancouver-based Michael Green Architecture and Architect-of-Record DLR Group, the office building is named T3, which stands for Timber, Technology, and Transit.
“As businesses compete to attract and retain staff, T3 offers a modern re-interpretation of the historic building that appeals to young professionals,” says Architect Michael Green. “It celebrates the robust character of historic wood, brick, stone and steel buildings, but provides state of the art amenities, environmental performance, and technical capability needed for competitive businesses in Minneapolis.”
In addition to being constructed of sustainable lumber, the building will sequester about 3,200 tons of carbon.
StructureCraft, who worked on the project, said the building, which resembles nearby historic warehouses in the district, features a structural system around a fifth of the weight of a similarly sized concrete building. StructureCraft says it was able to construct the 180,000 square feet of timber required in less than 10 weeks.
From Woodworking Network: https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/news/woodworking-industry-news/tallest-timber-building-us-opens-its-doors?ss=news,news,woodworking_industry_news,news,almanac_market_data,news
by Web Editor | Sep 2, 2016 | News
Working with Oregon State University (OSU), Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) has been busy testing its design for a timber tower. The time-lapse video shows a section of the wood tower being submitted to 82,000 pounds of pressure.
SOM has been working on the Timber Tower Research Project, funded by the Softwood Lumber Board (SLB) since 2013. The goal of the project is to develop safe, sustainable building technologies using mass-timber. Using timber may reduce a building’s embedded carbon footprint by as much as 60% to 70% compared to benchmark concrete building. The Timber Tower Research Project has developed a structural system called the Concrete Jointed Timber Frame that employs mass-timber elements with reinforced concrete connections.
Since 2014, SOM and OSU have developed a comprehensive physical testing program, which recently completed a full-scale test to prove the system’s ability to satisfy code requirements. The 36-foot by 8-foot specimen is comprised of a Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) deck topped with a thin layer of reinforced concrete. The concrete is used to improve structural, acoustic, and fire performance. The composite allows for long spans with a relatively thin cross-section. The 82,000 pounds tested is roughly eight times the required design load. Forty-eight sensors recorded stresses as a hydraulic actuator loaded the specimen over two hours.
To see the video visit The Architects Newspaper: https://archpaper.com/2016/08/som-timber-tower-technology/#gallery-0-slide-0
by Web Editor | Nov 30, 2015 | News
We get so excited about Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT), the fancy plywood on steroids that we talk so much about on TreeHugger. But in fact, there is a much older technology for building with wood, that warehouses and factories were built out of 150 years ago with a fancy new name: Nail-Laminated Timber, or NLT. It used to be known as heavy timber or mill decking and is drop-dead simple: you just nail a pile of lumber together and voila.
Lucas Epp of Structurecraft stunned the audience in a presentation at the Wood Solutions Fair in Toronto, showing extraordinary projects built out of the stuff. Because while CLT is great stuff, it’s pretty new in North America, it’s expensive, and it’s not fully understood by the building inspectors. Whereas if you are doing a simple span, NLT does the job just fine, it’s a lot cheaper, can be made by anyone with a hammer and has been in the building codes forever.
It’s now being used in a 210,000 square foot, seven story office building in Minneapolis, where the developer, Hines, wanted “the warmth of wood and the embrace of green construction techniques and materials” to attract the tech and creative sector of the market. It also goes together much faster than a conventional steel or concrete building.
Heavy timber office and warehouse construction fell out of favor early in the 20th century after major fires in a number of cities caused the switch to concrete and steel noncombustible construction. The development of effective sprinklers has reduced that risk, and concerns about the carbon footprint of concrete have made renewable wood look a lot more attractive.
From TreeHugger.com: https://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/old-new-again-nail-laminated-timber.html?utm_source=WIT112715&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=WeekInTrees
