The Think Wood Mobile Tour launched outside of the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. on its journey across the country to showcase the environmental and economic benefits of softwood lumber and engineered wood products.
The mobile display, featuring numerous types of lumber, including cross-laminated timber (CLT), nail-laminated timber, and parallel strand lumber, highlights the many commercial and residential uses for different types of lumber products. Developers, architects, engineers, and contractors were among those present to experience the interactive elements, props, and models featured in the mobile exhibit.
The traveling exhibit, which will next showcase at the Council on Tall Building and Urban Habitats 10th World Congress in Chicago, Ill., includes a variety of elements telling the wood story from the forest to the market. The display touts the advantages of wood building and dispels some of the myths associated with wood as a building material. An element inside the exhibit displayed a charred piece of mass timber, dispelling the commonly-held belief that wood buildings will burn at a higher rate than steel buildings. The element provided information about how mass timber slows charring and how char creates a protective layer for the wood.
On hand for the launch of the Think Wood Mobile Tour were U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) and architect Susan Jones. Both of them spoke briefly about forest management, carbon storage, and the future of mass timber construction.
Westerman spoke about his legislation, The Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2019, and three of its main objectives, to “plant more trees, grow more wood, [and] use more wood.” Westerman also spoke of the importance of developing new markets and expanding markets for mass timber products, such as CLT.
Jones is currently serving a 2016-2018 appointment on the International Code Council Ad Hoc Tall Wood Building Committee to provide expertise on integrating mass timber into current building codes and to update building code to allow for taller wood buildings. She spoke about the cultivation of a mass timber community and the importance of sharing stories about the value of work being done with mass timber. Jones said mass timber is in a “pivotal moment,” with potential to scale even larger than 18-story mass timber buildings now permitted in the proposed 2021 International Building Code (IBC).
Creating awareness in the industry is an important hurdle, but there are indications mass timber is making inroads in the construction industry. According to WoodWorks, 599 mass timber projects have been constructed or are in design across the U.S., as of June 2019, an increase from roughly 400 in 2018. The projects tracked by WoodWorks include multifamily, commercial, or institutional projects. Of the 599 projects, 305 are CLT projects. The highest activity areas include California (31 projects started or built and 55 in design), Washington (25 projects started or built and 31 in design), and Texas (15 projects started or built and 37 in design).
The tour will also land at the Remodeling Show & Deck Expo in Louisville, Ky., in November, JLC Live in Portland, Ore., in December, and International Builders Show in Las Vegas next January. The mobile exhibit will also be brought to a handful of schools in the southern region of the U.S. with strong forestry departments. The tour is provided in partnership by the Softwood Lumber Board, U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Endowment for Forestry Communities, and the APA – Engineered Wood Association.
