Pushing the boundaries of wood design

When Portland, Oregon-based architect Ben Waechter acquired a property that became the site for his firm’s office more than a decade ago, it was not a foregone conclusion that they would be building in mass timber. Wachter wanted to build out of a single material that was as simple and had as few layers as possible. 

The material for initial project studies was autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC). “When we started getting serious, we realized that [concrete] is not an expertise of the Pacific Northwest,” he says. “There was a lot of energy around cross-laminated-timber (CLT), and mass timber can be a carbon sink, so it’s much more environmentally sensitive than the concrete products.”

As the general contractor and the architect, Wachter’s firm collaborated with mass timber supplier KLH. “The whole thing came as a kit of parts from the factory,” Waechter says.

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Source: Waechter Architecture, Portland, OR, USA