The Short History and Promising Future of Tall Mass Timber Buildings
As an extension of our exhibition TALL TIMBER: The Future of Cities in Wood, the Skyscraper Museum presents a series of lectures and panels that bring together key voices in the Mass Timber movement to reflect on its short history, current condition, and promising future.
The revolutionary engineered-wood product, Cross Laminated Timber (CLT), began production in the North American market around 2014, two decades after European factories started to manufacture the large, strong, structural panels.
The first tall (8-story) Mass Timber buildings in North America were completed in 2014 in British Columbia and 2018 in Portland, Oregon. Adoption of this new material has, however, been slow. The series asks: What are the next steps to make wood work for tall buildings, so Mass Timber can positively impact the climate crisis through the carbon-storing benefits of the renewable resource, wood? What are the range of issues must we consider to ensure Mass Timber can succeed at scale – without joining concrete and steel as extractive and carbon-intensive industries?
SCHEDULE
Click on the WEEK schedule below to watch videos of past lectures:
Rendering of Framework, courtesy of LEVER Architecture
Rendering of 475 W. 19th St., courtesy of SHoP
TALL TIMBER:
BICOASTAL BEGINNING AND WHERE WE ARE
By Thomas Robinson, (bio), Christopher Sharples, (bio)
Moderated by Jeff Spiritos (bio)
The Museum's "Mass Timber Semester" lecture series, which brings together key voices in the Mass Timber movement to reflect on its short history, current condition, and promising future, begins with an IN-PERSON program to be held at the office of the international engineering firm Arup, at 77 Water St. in lower Manhattan.
The opening program features architects Thomas Robinson of Portland, Oregon-based LEVER Architecture and Chris Sharples of SHoP in New York City to discuss their first Mass Timber high-rise designs and to link those beginnings to their current work. In 2015, their projects were selected as the co-winners of the U.S. Tall Wood Building Prize, a competition – sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Softwood Lumber Board (SLB), and Binational Softwood Lumber Council (BSLC) – directed at stimulating innovation in high-rise applications in Mass Timber construction. While neither Framework – LEVER’s proposal for a 12-story, mixed-use building – nor 475 W. 18 St., SHoP’s design for a 10-story Manhattan apartment building near the High Line, were ultimately built, the projects advanced the goals of establishing fire, seismic, and other testing to apply to later projects.
Over the past decade, LEVER and SHoP have continued to explore Mass Timber. On the West Coast, LEVER is completing several large-scale commissions, including the Adidas Headquarters Expansion in Portland, Oregon, and a creative office complex in L.A., 843 N Spring Street, as well as the addition to the Portland (Maine) Museum of Art. SHoP’s portfolio in wood includes two tech headquarters across continents, the new headquarters for YouTube in San Bruno, California and the award-winning Atlassian Central in Sydney, Australia. A 42-story Mass Timber, steel, and concrete tower, Atlassian Central will become the world’s tallest hybrid Mass Timber building upon completion in 2027.
Thomas Robinson is the Founder and Principal of LEVER Architecture. Prior to establishing the firm, Thomas led cultural and institutional projects for Allied Works and Herzog & de Meuron. He received an MArch from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley.
Christopher Sharples is a founding principal of SHoP, an architecture firm in Lower Manhattan, New York City, with projects located on five continents. Currently, Chris’s concentration is on revolutionary models of building that embrace next-generation environmental and materials systems such as bio-based material systems, as well as process-driven innovation utilizing offsite manufacturing to achieve more efficient and environmentally responsive building delivery.
Jeff Spiritos is the principal of Spiritos Properties, a commercial and residential developer that for the past nine years has turned to build only with mass timber. Spiritos has multiple ongoing mass timber principal development, consultancy, and advocacy projects underway in the Northeast US.
Speaker Bios
Thomas Robinson is the Founder and Principal of LEVER Architecture. Prior to establishing the firm, Thomas led cultural and institutional projects for Allied Works and Herzog & de Meuron. He received an MArch from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley.
Christopher Sharples is a founding principal of SHoP, an architecture firm in Lower Manhattan, New York City, with projects located on five continents. Currently, Chris’s concentration is on revolutionary models of building that embrace next-generation environmental and materials systems such as bio-based material systems, as well as process-driven innovation utilizing offsite manufacturing to achieve more efficient and environmentally responsive building delivery.
Jeff Spiritos is the principal of Spiritos Properties, a commercial and residential developer that for the past nine years has turned to build only with mass timber. Spiritos has multiple ongoing mass timber principal development, consultancy, and advocacy projects underway in the Northeast US.