Clearing the Way for Mass Timber Usage in Oregon

October 6, 2022

Urban Land Magazine

While at project^, Hallová led research and development for Framework, the first high-rise building made from wood to be permitted in the United States. During its project run, from 2015 to 2017, Framework received a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Tall Wood Building Prize Competition to test the product’s safety and benefits for use in high-rise construction. The grant was sponsored in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The project was ultimately not built due to changes in the affordable housing tax credit market, but its open-source data helped to change the International Building Code and launch the mass timber industry nationally.

Invented in Germany 40 years ago, Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) is a mass timber-engineered wood product made by gluing together layers of wood to create a light wood product with strong structural integrity that rivals the load-bearing capacity of concrete and steel.

European developers have been using CLT to build high-rises for over two decades, but it only became legal in the United States in 2018, when Oregon revised its building code to include this product in high-rise construction.

The U.S. building industry has been slow to adopt mass timber, mainly due to its lack of availability, but that is changing. According to Hallová , there were only three CLT manufacturing facilities in North America at the time of Framework with only one in the U.S; now there are 11.

Hallová has used mass timber products in other projects and cites its many benefits in creating aesthetically beautiful, cost-efficient, sustainable projects.

“Wood is renewable, captures carbon, and is recyclable, as it can be reused when the building’s life cycle is over,” she said. Research into the sustainability of hybrid, mid-rise CLT commercial buildings revealed a 15-26 percent reduction in global warming potential compared to a concrete building, depending on the building design. Additionally, Hallová points out that mass timber can be sourced from forests and manufactured locally.