More developers turning to wood for sustainability
SPOKANE, WASH. >> Althoughitwasestablished in 1873 near some of North America’s most productive forests, Spokane has rarely focused on new timber products in construction. But that is starting to change.
In the city’s downtown, Eastern Washington University has moved into the Catalyst Building, a five-story, 150,000-square-foot structure, the first tall wood office building in Washington state. Sunshine pours through the $40 million building’s large windows and bathes the wood beams and laminated wood floor and ceiling panels.
Built by Katerra, a construction company based in Menlo Park, Catalyst is the newest of 384 large “mass timber” buildings in the United States. The first was built in Montana in 2011, and according to industry figures, 500 more are under construction or planned.
The cross-laminated wood panels used for Catalyst were manufactured at Katerra’s 270,000-square-foot automated plant on the outskirts of the city. The $150 million plant is the newest and largest of nine in the United States that make laminated wood panels, and three more are in development.
Both the building and the plant are at the leading edge of the fast-growing U.S. market for tall wood buildings constructed of the laminated panels, beams and columns that the industry calls mass timber.
Developers are turning to wood for its versatility and sustainability. And prominent companies like Google, Microsoft and Walmart have expressed support for a renewable resource that some experts believe could challenge steel and cement as favored materials for construction.
“We are making huge headway in the U.S. now,” said Michael Green, a leading mass timber architect for Katerra who is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and designed the Catalyst Building and several more in North America.
Wood has several advantages over other building materials, including the ability to help curb climate disruption, that are driving the interest, he said.
Steel and cement generate significant shares of greenhouse gases during every phase of their production. By contrast, wood stores carbon, offsetting the emission of greenhouse gases.
“The environmental aspects alone are attractive,” Green said. “Cross-laminated timber panels are faster to assemble. There’s much less construction site waste.”
Katerra bills itself as a Silicon Valley technology company devoted to designing, manufacturing and constructing ecologically sensitive buildings; it operates a second U.S. plant and two in India. The company reported $1.7 billion in revenue last year, and it has $4 billion in orders, according to company executives.
Southern yellow pine, raised in Arkansas forests and cut by local mills, will be turned into laminated panels, beams and columns by Structurlam
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