Timber In The City

As synthetic materials and mutant and hybrid concoctions attain prominence in our daily lives—in our handheld devices, cooking utensils, vehicles, even things as simple as our shopping bags—the design and construction industries have instead re-embraced the familiar, the conventional—wood, which has regained prominence through innovations in engineering and construction methodologies. Technology is now commonly used—and often (though not always) affordably used—to cut, perforate, assemble, erect, and even fabricate materials in a manner not previously possible. Wood is one such material, and Timber in the City documents both the imaginings of those in the nascence of their education and practice and the executed work of design professionals at the leading edge of architecture. These designers, regardless of the duration of their immersion in the field, have imaginatively rethought the means by which we build and the methods by which we define space merely through differing deployments of a familiar building material.

Over the past 10-15 years a renaissance in wood architecture has occurred with the development of new wood building systems and design strategies, elevating wood from a predominantly single-family residential idiom to a rival of concrete and steel construction for a variety of building types, including high rises. This new solid wood architecture offers unparalleled environmental as well as construction and aesthetic benefits, and is of growing importance for professionals and academics involved in green design. Solid Wood provides the first detailed book which allows readers to understand new mass timber/massive wood architecture. It provides: historical context in wood architecture from around the world a strong environmental rationale for the use of wood in buildings recent developments in contemporary fire safety and structural issues insights into building code challenges detailed case studies of new large-scale wood building systems on a country-by-country basis. Case studies from the UK, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Italy, Canada, the United States, New Zealand and Australia highlight design strategies, construction details and unique cultural attitudes in wood design. The case studies include the most ambitious academic, hospitality, industrial, multi-family, and wood office buildings in the world. With discussions from leading architectural, engineering, and material manufacturing firms in Europe, North America and the South Pacific, Solid Wood disrupts preconceived notions and serves as an indispensable guide to twenty-first century wood architecture and its environmental and cultural benefits.

This comprehensive, hands-on guide, filled with practical architectural, engineering, and construction guidance, brings you up to date on design, materials, codes, and applications. With expertise from a leading timber architect, a top designer/builder of heavy timber frames, a wood scientist, and several renowned timber engineers, this book provides a Conception-to-Completion Professional Blueprint essential to anyone interested in or involved with timber construction.

Mass Timber / Design and Research presents new research and design work with Mass Timber, a new construction technology, well-known in Europe, but relatively unfamiliar in the United States. Leading the Mass Timber design dialogue in the US, the author, Susan Jones, an architect in Seattle, Washington, has been pioneering the new, innovative use of wood over the past six years, since she built her own family's house from cross-laminated timber in 2015 in a neighborhood in Seattle. The book presents her Seattle firm, her family, and her University of Washington students' years of research and design. Opening with the story of three generations of her family's own sustainable forest practices, the book presents research into Pacific Northwest forestry, timber and Cross-Laminated Timber manufacturing practices, to carbon analysis and carbon comparisons between standard building construction assemblies and technologies; and concludes with the design of model buildings both designed and built by her firm, atelierjones and her University of Washington students: including a single-family house, a church, schools, multi-family housing, and a twelve-story Tall Timber Wood Innovation tower on the University of Washington campus in Seattle.

The once denuded northeastern United States is now a region of trees. Nature Next Door argues that the growth of cities, the construction of parks, the transformation of farming, the boom in tourism, and changes in the timber industry have together brought about a return of northeastern forests. Although historians and historical actors alike have seen urban and rural areas as distinct, they are in fact intertwined, and the dichotomies of farm and forest, agriculture and industry, and nature and culture break down when the focus is on the history of Northeastern woods. Cities, trees, mills, rivers, houses, and farms are all part of a single transformed regional landscape. In an examination of the cities and forests of the northeastern United States-with particular attention to the woods of Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Vermont-Ellen Stroud shows how urbanization processes there fostered a period of recovery for forests, with cities not merely consumers of nature but creators as well. Interactions between city and hinterland in the twentieth century Northeast created a new wildness of metropolitan nature: a reforested landscape intricately entangled with the region's cities and towns.

Michigan's foremost lumbertowns, flourishing urban industrial centers in the late 19th century, faced economic calamity with the depletion of timber supplies by the end of the century. Turning to their own resources and reflecting individual cultural identities, Saginaw, Bay City, and Muskegon developed dissimilar strategies to sustain their urban industrial status. This study is a comprehensive history of these lumbertowns from their inception as frontier settlements to their emergence as reshaped industrial centers. Primarily an examination of the role of the entrepreneur in urban economic development, Michigan Lumbertowns considers the extent to which the entrepreneurial approach was influenced by each city's cultural-ethnic construct and its social history. More than a narrative history, it is a study of violence, business, and social change.

One of the most critical decisions an architect must make when designing a building is the type of structural system that will be employed throughout. The main systems that an architect will consider are steel, concrete, and wood. Today, steel and concrete dominate the market for mid-rise buildings, often dismissing wood for its perceived weakness and expensive costs. And yet, there has been a movement in recent years among architects and designers to use an innovation in wood structures known as mass timber: a structural system that uses large wood panels, beams, and columns. Their justification is not rooted in strength or costs, but in a more dire need: our environment. Through the photosynthesis process, trees absorb carbon dioxide, the main culprit of climate change, and when made into lumber products, the wood sequesters the carbon. On the contrary, steel and concrete have manufacturing processes that are catastrophic to our environment. With such strong reasoning to back wood construction, it seems that architects today would all specify wood structural systems in their buildings. In reality, the decision is much more complex, and there are many factors that are still preventing a wide-scale use of mass timber. Along with sustainability, other critical topics such as structural capabilities, costs, timelines, life safety and code requirements are all considered by architects. It is imperative to investigate the problems that are hindering mass timber, so that these issues can be resolved. With the population increasing exponentially, and the environment suffering from years of abuse, it is important that we find a way to encourage more mid-rise buildings, especially in urban areas, to use a mass timber structure. A rising percentage of the population is searching for affordable housing, and mass timber might be the most sustainable solution possible.

Timber Design covers timber fundamentals for students and professional architects and engineers, such as tension elements, flexural elements, shear and torsion, compression elements, connections, and lateral design. As part of the Architect’s Guidebooks to Structures series, it provides a comprehensive overview using both imperial and metric units of measurement. Timber Design begins with an intriguing case study and uses a range of examples and visual aids, including more than 200 figures, to illustrate key concepts. As a compact summary of fundamental ideas, it is ideal for anyone needing a quick guide to timber design.