Mass Timber Group Show: Sustainable Building Experts

10-Story Timber Build Broke the Rules - The Hive w/Ryan McClanaghan of Dialog

• Brady & Nic

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How are leading architects like Ryan McClanaghan from DIALOG revolutionizing mass timber construction, and what innovative solutions are being implemented to tackle seismic challenges in high-rise buildings? Explore the journey of designing The Hive, one of North America's most ambitious mass timber structures, and gain valuable insights into the future of sustainable architecture in the AEC industry. 

 Visit DIALOG's Website: https://dialogdesign.ca/ 

Looking for your mass timber community? Attend the 2025 Mass Timber Group Summit in Denver Co - Aug 20-22nd!

Speaker 1:

One thing that's really exciting is that it feels like we're getting better at it, I think, as an industry. I think some of the early experiments a little bit of the Wild West of you know.

Speaker 2:

How do you go from being new to mass timber to designing one of the most impressive buildings in North America? Well, today's guest, Ryan McClanagan, an associate architect with Dialog, has done just that.

Speaker 3:

The Hive is one of the most ambitious and visually striking mass timber buildings ever built. It's an innovative 10-story structure featuring a cellular exoskeleton, a perimeter timber braced frame system and CLT shear walls. Ryan breaks down his journey into mass timber, learning from top experts and the Hive's innovative design, from its braced frame system to prefabrication. If you want to learn how to top designers, master mass timber, push boundaries and create game-changing buildings, this episode is for you.

Speaker 2:

But before we dive in, if you're serious about stepping up your mass timber game, networking with the best in the business and having a great time while you're at it, you need to be at the Mass Timber Group Summit this August in Denver. Tickets are already live and we do expect to sell out, so go to masstimbergroup to grab yours before early bird pricing expires.

Speaker 1:

So with that, let's get into it. We're Dialogue. We have a bunch of studios across Canada and one in the US in San Francisco. We've been working in the mass timber space for almost 15 years now, kind of on some early, smaller infrastructure project like District Energy, but we're so thrilled to be doing more and more work in it. You know, currently we've got about a dozen projects on the books. We've got three or four in construction right now and we got a bunch of design and a handful that are just about complete or completed.

Speaker 1:

Our projects sort of range in all types but I would say are largely kind of larger projects. You know, I would look this up across our practice People working in the mass timber. On the design side we have about 20, 30 people kind of at any time working on mass timber projects and we're multidisciplinary. So we do architectural, structural landscape, interior design, master planning, urban design, architectural structural landscape, interior design, master planning, urban design, and so you know, depending on project and what makes sense, we've kind of got a mix of people from all disciplines. What's pretty cool is our projects range from, you know, small specialty structures. We're working on a pretty amazing freeform timber bus canopy in California right now. It's pretty sophisticated and pretty large to out. Here in Vancouver we just completed, like a small kind of waffle looking timber canopy over a hydrogen I guess call it like a hydrogen gas station. It's a small canopy standalone, you know. Up the other end we're working on a 19-story hybrid mass timber structure for housing development. So that's mixed use, but that's going to be housing and market rental for people. We've got a handful of projects in design for student housing, which is a big deal up here. We have arts projects, we have cultural projects, we've got offices. We have arts projects, we have cultural projects, we've got offices. We've got a new engineering building for a university out here and that's pretty cool to be doing. The home of civil engineering and structural engineers is a tall task, but I think that's a really exciting project. So we kind of do a little bit of everything in the mass timber space and we're really excited to be working with everybody.

Speaker 1:

I attended university in Toronto, the University of Toronto, and while I was there, mass timber was becoming a little bit of a thing but was mostly being pioneered. So this was in 2011 in Europe. So this was in 2011 in Europe, and so I was lucky enough to do a work term in Berlin at Sarbacutton Architects and they had a really interesting project in the office at the time, low to Know, which is in Helsinki, which had a seven or eight story, if I can't recall which one mass timber office building. So it was large at scale and very early on and that project really kind of whet my interest and it returned back to Canada, graduated, started working. But I always thought, you know, there's something about this material and this way about thinking of a project. I think that really captured my imagination and so fast forward a little bit, I joined Dialog. It's an architecture engineering company here in Canada with an office in San Francisco, so we're kind of across North America and Dialog invests in its people and research and so there's this annual prize that is travel and research. It's really cool. It's an open call. Anybody in the company can apply something that you're passionate about that you think would help drive the practice forward. And so this was.

Speaker 1:

You know, a couple of years after starting, I was selected to go study mass timber I was mostly looking at kind of like free form timber framing, so some of your more kind of ambitious canopies and things like that and headed to Europe on this study travel trip to connect with people, see projects and kind of learn from the best.

Speaker 1:

So that's kind of my starting point, which I thought was really awesome, and what that really did for me was kind of open the world and the community of Mass Timber.

Speaker 1:

You know, you can imagine I was pretty young at the time and what I was amazed by is the number of doors that open. The people who made you know meaningful connections, you know, not expecting much in return, but kind of out of their own interest and kind of kindness, willing to share what they've learned, willing to share contacts, ways to get into buildings that you wanted to go see. Kind of quite amazed I found that the extra effort that people would go into to sort of help you find your feet in this world, help you find your feet in this world. So I can, I can talk about, if you guys are interested kind of what that looked like and who I met with. Cause that was, you know, still defining some of the thinking I've taken forward and then landed back kind of into the real world again of project work and and started kind of my first mass timber project, which was the hive at 2150 Keith drive here in Vancouver, canada canada yeah, man, let's.

Speaker 2:

Let's shout some people out like who would like really stood out to you and part of this like learning journey, who really fought yeah, the sector.

Speaker 1:

First stop, first leg in the trip was to london. Uh, so we're in the uk and that generation of the wa thistletons, uh, who did their murray grove um, they were tremendously generous with their time. Really cool, you know, invited in, met with them, talked about the work that they had done, but also a peek into the work on the boards at the moment, which I think is really cool. You know, half of the really amazing projects in mass timber are in design. They're not completed, they're not something you can kind of get into and walk around. So that openness was really appreciated. And then also, you know, being able to go around their area of London and check out the work they had completed was amazing. So they were great.

Speaker 1:

Klh, the CLT manufacturer, you know, their big European group, would have an office in london. Um, they were so generous with their time to say hey, um, you know, come into our office, let's talk about what we make, let's talk about the other manufacturers. They weren't afraid about talking about what kind of the industry does, so that you can understand where they fit in. Um, they're not trying to full. They weren't trying to full sell and say, hey, we're the only solution. And they were also very open about North American supply as they saw it, which was really interesting. They described and I thought this was really cool how they've been collaborating back in those days and this would have been probably 2015, with North American glulam and CLT manufacturers, because they needed to see this whole industry thrive in North America, especially as we were getting into our first big, significant projects. That things had to go well like that. We couldn't afford to have a bunch of bad projects, bad experiences, and have that sector or this construction type fail. So I thought that was really amazing, that it's like they're, you know, at one point doing business, but also they're advising their direct competitors in some cases because they wanted to see the whole pie grow. So they were amazing.

Speaker 1:

And then a bunch of other you know design architect offices in London, like we met with Foster and partners, folks like that to just geek out and talk about how do you deal with complexity in these free-form mass timber structures? Do you make it, you know, a curved glulam beam, or do you put the complexity in the node of where things come together in a joint? So it was really awesome. And then headed to Switzerland with the folks from design to production, fabian Schur, who's brilliant, and some of the folks at Bloomer Lehman, a couple others out there, and then headed to Helsinki for the Holzbau Nordic Wood Summit. So kind of capped it off there, came back, presented what we did, who we met with, who we learned from, learned from, and then, you know, kind of off of the back of that, got this pretty cool mass timber project opportunity so you're starting to work into about more or less 15 years of architectural experience.

Speaker 3:

I and I'm imagining, early on, mass timber really wasn't such a buzzword. It really really wasn't. Doesn't have everybody everybody's attention like it does now. When have you seen, like in the last few years, five years or about what time did you see kind of like this shift of everybody starting to be all right, let's talk mass timber, or this is a real thing that's actually revolutionizing the industry.

Speaker 1:

It feels like the last 10 years have been you know that that's sort of where the momentum has been picking up and the last five for sure it feels like we've really launched. It's pretty amazing. The forerunners, I think, have been doing this for a long time. You know Europe's been doing this much longer than North America, but I think the scale at which and speed that North America has kind of adopted it, it's really exciting. I think some of the folks that we've been lucky to work with over the years, like Fastenap in the structural side and other leaders, have this very deep expertise in it and they've been doing these pioneering projects for so long that their timeline feels you know these pioneering projects for so long that their timeline feels you know a little bit deeper than the rest of the industry. I think some of the you know it's one part of the pie, but all the building code updates, ibc and some of the governmental levers that people have been willing to pull to help you know demonstration projects and convince people and show them the potential. I think that's kind of the nice way that this has evolved. It's demonstrating hey, this is what we could do and this is how it's different and people are really excited and the uptake has happened. One thing that's really exciting is that it feels like we're getting better at it, I think, as an industry.

Speaker 1:

I think some of the early experiments a little bit of the Wild West of you know, everybody trying to do something a little bit different on every single project.

Speaker 1:

Like, if you look at some of those early woodworks I'm just going to pick one of floor assembly brochures it's just like a fruit salad of different approaches.

Speaker 1:

There's all kinds of weird buildups, there's, you know, and and everybody's trying to tackle the same things, but nobody had really, you know, decided on what the solutions were.

Speaker 1:

And what's kind of cool is, like, this industry evolution and kind of fitness of you know we're, we're narrowing in on approaches in certain areas right, because we're getting the economy, we're getting suppliers and and um companies who are developing products that are addressing these solutions. Right, and so, um, it's making life a little bit easier, I think, because you're not necessarily doing the pioneering research on your project on the back of, you know, a client and getting university funding and testing it out. It's like you know there's the industry support that has said, oh yeah, we'll go do that, right, like we'll go do lab tests, we'll go figure out the fire rating of it for you, and so everybody's just a little bit more sophisticated, which is cool because it lets you put the energy into the things that you know you want to, and I still think there's room for innovation. I don't want to put down people who love that stuff, but for most people it's making it a lot more accessible.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think, well, we're going to talk about some innovation based on the high of the project that we're going to unpack here in a second. But you said it was a little Wild west back in the day and I remember one of our very first podcast episodes we interviewed. Greg Kingsley is the CEO of KLNA engineers and builders out in Denver and he's his exact words where I can design a steel building in my sleep mass timbers, wild west. Nobody can do that Right. It's like back in the day. It's like now you can see like we have more standardized might not be the right word, but like resources that you can go and learn from. It's like you don't have to like cut your teeth on every single project. So if you were speaking to an architect or an engineer or some aec professional, that was like hey, heard about this mass timber thing, want to learn more. Where's the first place? You point them.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a great question. I think there's like a few really useful ways to go. One is there's, you know, so many amazing groups that have put a lot of time and energy into creating resources to like. Put those at your hands so like the woodworks of the world are amazing. Part of what needs to go along with that is, I would advocate for, start showing up to conferences, to talks and connect with people, because you know, if you're curious about it, if you're interested, you're asking good questions.

Speaker 1:

People love to talk about what they're up to. People want to share. I think people are so open about it. If you say, hey, I'm new to Mass Timber and I'm trying to get into it, what they can provide is the perspective and some of the strategy or decision making along the way that's going to help you understand how to use these resources. I think that's one of the big things is, as you said, the steel building versus a timber building analogy is there is a little bit of a change in the way you have to think about things you know and understanding where the kind of tricky spots are, and that kind of comes with experience and working through this and getting get a few repetitions Right. But until you get to that, I think it's.

Speaker 1:

It's really awesome to to start building that community, connect with people, building that community, connect with people. And if you've got a question, reach out and don't take no for an answer. Ask somebody else, get a bunch of opinions, figure out which one kind of resonates with you. That would be one big step. And then, if you can do it, get out in the world and visit some timber projects. If you can see them in construction, that's even more amazing. You know, a finished building kind of tells one part of the story, but if you're out on site and you see it coming together, it really gives you so many learnings and you don't have to have done all the design or construction yourself.

Speaker 1:

You know, I've been lucky enough to get out to different universities or design schools and talk about it and for me, in like my evolution, I got to attend a lecture and what they had done is they had basically said, like here's a bunch of buildings and we're not going to talk about theory but we're going to talk about, like, the history of construction.

Speaker 1:

And for me, like that was the first time where I was like oh, like, like a light bulb went on. I was like, oh, I can understand these historical buildings or any building, because we're kind of using the same paint palette, right, like we still have, you know, stone, or maybe I'm using mass timber, I'm using steel stud or I'm using drywall, but, like, if you start thinking about buildings from a point of view of, like how we design construction, then you can just go look at a project and you can start to analyze it like oh well, what, take it apart in your mind and reverse engineer it. And so I found that has been like really interesting, because when you get into visiting projects, talking to people about mass timber, you sit there and you go, oh, like if I was in their seat and I get what you're trying to do here, right, like you're trying to create a smoke separation between these two spaces. This is what you did, or you could, kind of you could imagine that that might be one of the drivers. But what I found which is cool is this perspective is just like made all these buildings accessible to me, right, like I can go, oh, wow, like that that's what you're trying to grapple with. Well, how would I do that? And so, getting out in the world and kind of making those experiences happen.

Speaker 3:

I think is really amazing. Well, I'm so glad that you said to go and walk these projects in real life. It's the biggest thing, it's, it's truly it's life-changing in the sense of like a building, like you cannot feel there. There's an overwhelming feeling that a person gets in a beautifully done mass timber structure I don't know. Well, I was going to say I don't know what it's called. It's called biophilia, you know. And so like we know what this feeling is. But, like everybody thinks, maybe sometimes it's like it's woo woo or like you know, yeah, like go take a walk out in nature. It's going to lower your heart, your, your blood pressure and your heartbeat and it actually does. But but to go in and walk these projects in person is when it actually the feeling of overwhelming. The light bulb is like oh, I see what's going on now. This is different, this is unlike I've ever. This is like oh, I see what's going on Now. This is different, this is unlike I've ever. This is like a feeling of warmth, and so thank you for saying that. And then also like going to conferences. It's so true.

Speaker 3:

We our Denver Mass Timber Group Summit is coming up in August, and we surveyed all the attendees and asked them what's the number one thing that they want, and they said in-person community conferences, where somebody can go in person, shake hands with real life, experienced people and just shoot the breeze and then it's back of the napkin projects. It happens like during a drink, you know over a beer, where then all of a sudden in one to two to three years, these projects actually turn into a reality. But it happens in person first. So I just wanted to thank you for saying that I wish more people went to conferences and just immersed themselves. But I can't get enough about the hive. I've been, I've been losing sleep wanting to talk about this thing. Where do you want to jump off? I mean, vancouver is known for high seismic earthquake areas. What did you have to do differently with the Hive and this mass timber project that you have?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a great question. So the Hive is an office building here in Vancouver, Canada, and it is for a pretty unique client.

Speaker 2:

And it is for a pretty unique client, the seismic. I was looking at some of your pictures that you have online. We'll throw them up here on the screen. Actually, you know what I think I was on the engineers like fast and net, but like the challenge with building in a high seismic zone with mass timber is something that hasn't been done a ton right. There are certain projects that have done it, but can you kind of walk us through the approach that you guys took to address the seismic concerns with a 10 story mass timber building? Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1:

So what was pretty cool for us as a design team is and the owner kind of subscribed to this idea is we. We only wanted to use concrete in the building as much as we needed to to get out of the ground. So the site slopes, so it's kind of embedded into the sloping landscape, is the first level in concrete and that's where we have, you know, back of house like loading kind of end of trip facilities for you to park your bike, have a shower if you commute in that way, and then above that. So the top of the level two slab is the top of our concrete and from there we went with an all wood gravity and lateral system above. I'm not a structural engineer so I'm kind of parroting the amazing talks that Robert Jackson and his team over at Fasten Up have given, immensely grateful to their expertise on this project. They're such leaders in the space and such creative design engineers in timber. They're just phenomenal. So from there we switched to a let's see if I can zoom in here for you guys. We switched to an all timber system for the main building. We have four CLT shear walls that kind of run in the short direction of the building. The building is kind of like a long rectangle on the site. There's a sewer right of way, that kind of slices the building. So you kind of have that angled face that we're looking at.

Speaker 1:

So the concept for the building kind of came out of this very innocent question of what if we did all wood structure above L2? And is there anything interesting about moving the structure to the perimeter of the building as much as we could, as opposed to doing sort of your traditional concrete core post and beam building? And so what sort of that came up with? What that resulted in in kind of conversations with Vasanep and design collaboration together was the idea of, well, let shear walls. There's steel BRB systems, there's timber buckling, restraint braces, and what they've shown in conferences I can try to track down a slide for you is this kind of cool complexity spectrum. So some are more straightforward and some, as you get to the other end, are more innovative and a little more complicated and exciting. And so we sort of went on the exciting route. So we have a timber buckling or strain braces sort of at every alternating spacing and what's kind of cool is because of the number we need, just based on kind of the building proportions, they kind of wrap around the building in this kind of consistent expression, around the building in this kind of consistent expression. And from there we went well, what is a one? We kind of designed the orientation of these braces so that we have them in kind of bookmatch pairs and skipping two bays and then angling at the other one.

Speaker 1:

And what was kind of cool is we kind of traced this kind of hexagonal shape that is like, as you said, this kind of very biophilic expression to the building. That we've been quite pleased that it's really resonated with people. And part of that as well was a desire from the ownership to have access to garden space. They wanted, you know, fresh air, they want to be able to step out from, you know, their interior office space and get some sunshine, make a phone call, not bother everybody, just kind of have a pause. And so you know that was kind of an interesting mandate of having balconies, you know, quite accessible for people in a mass timber building.

Speaker 1:

So what we did is we kind of took that unique geometry of the building facade. You know this, this uh, elongation and a kind of honeycomb shape actually is, you know, the way that the building um carries the forces that act on it. So from that we thought well, let's have a facade that follows those forces. So we kind of extruded that shape and turned it into this series of balconies, a network of balconies that kind of cascade along the building. They're on the east, south and west faces the areas where you'd want to be in the sunlight and they're a little bit different on the short ends. Kind of makes a more interesting composition. But those are kind of like the main design element of the facade of the building.

Speaker 2:

Like Nick said, like we've been watching this project and it's super fascinating, like I love. Like you talked about like exposing the structure and like incorporating it into the design and you'd mentioned kind of like the, the fractal patterns, if you will, uh, of the of the structural system and that how that plays into like the biophilic response from just like visually looking at it, like that those are real. And then you guys took it like one step further with like outdoor garden spaces and greenery. Man, that's so cool. But before we had started recording we had talked about some of maybe perceived challenges with balconies and mass timber structures. Can you kind of tell us like what some of the strongly held opinions are around this and kind of like the solution that you guys took to remedy that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, in that mindset shift that we talked about, of designing your buildings sort of differently, I think what happens kind of in traditional construction is that we design for kind of the finished condition. We're like, oh, this is what's going to happen, we're going to pour concrete, we're just going to cantilever out a balcony or we're just going to, you know, extend the structure out, um, and deal with it normally. But what I think has to happen in mass timber and maybe this is kind of like a, a lesson learned over the years is that the best timber are. Designers, you know, doesn't really matter what, um, you know where you sit. If you're code structural, architectural, mechanical engineers, everybody, um, you have to imagine how the building is actually going to be put together and anticipate that right, because that's sort of the magic of increasing the speed of construction, of making things kind of flow smoothly. You have to anticipate that. So, in balcony, um, and kind of solving this balcony problem, what we did is we we got advice from our pre-construction team who are great, um, they sort of said, well, here's, here's the philosophy of how we think we'll build this is, we're gonna, we're gonna bring the concrete structure up, then we're gonna go with wood all the way up as far. And what we're gonna going to do is we're going to chase it with an envelope system.

Speaker 1:

So this was you know, early days we used a unitized curtain wall system because some of the big mega panel products weren't available and there weren't kind of enough for competitive bid, which this project had to be. So it's unitized curtain wall system and then we're going to go up with that. We're going to have from the main structure we're going to have HSS stub outs through the curtain wall and we're going to bolt the balconies on from the outside. So it's kind of the one, two, three, a unique solution of having a steel connection through your envelope. You know this is done for canopy, this is done for other things and projects all the time. So in a way we're like, okay, that's not a super risky solution, because we kind of know what this is. This is a current world trade working directly around a steel structure. We kind of understand the building envelope science around that. But then there's other ways beyond that that we can kind of limit the risk, which is really cool.

Speaker 1:

So the balcony structure is prefabbed so that there's sort of steel outriggers and then CLT panels that sit in and the CLT is like doing the work which is pretty cool of when you step out on these balconies and because of these steel outriggers connected to the columns, the main structure, we could kind of play with the height and the elevation of those so those are able to be dropped a little bit than your main floor finish, so that the structural deck is down here a little bit and you've got your roof drainage and all that.

Speaker 1:

But we can have your finished pavers and the surface you step out at flush, because if you're just cantilevering your clt slab you're never going to make the build up work. And I think that's where the challenge is. Um, and what we've kind of seen in good building envelope design is you have your inside wood structure and if you want wood structure outside, it's. It's actually it's its own separate thing in that you can have your good envelope break between the two. And what was really cool too is then, by prefabbing all these balconies, the roofing was also done off-site in a warehouse, so those came all fully wrapped up and then they were installed, just bolted onto the outside of the building, in 14 days total.

Speaker 3:

I guess it took me a while to recognize that, those, those hexon heck whoops. There there goes my little, uh, my zoom, the outside geography of it, what kind of looks like a stop sign. But it's not the eight sided geography or the, you know, the um. You know whatever I'm looking for, it's the six item, but those are the balconies. I didn't recognize that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the. What we kind of like is that we were able to have this cool expression of the building but that they kind of have a function. They're pretty cool. They they help break the buildings, scale down and kind of keep it interesting Like in the city. I've been amazed. It's this pretty cool eye-catching landmark and then when we were just recently able to step out on one of these for the first time, as they've done kind of the installation and the kind of full mock-up of finishes on one and because they're two stories tall, you actually kind of feel sheltered. You're kind of in this warm kind of wood wrap. The horizontal and then the diagonal surfaces of the wood are going to be exposed and so, even though you're kind of on the side of the building, kind of overlooking a street, you actually feel like you're kind of in a space you'd want to spend time in.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think it's easy to see why. Like there's no such thing as a straight box in nature, right, like the time in the buildings that we spend indoors is not indicative of nature, and I love how you guys kind of folded all that experience into a building. That kind of brings that out Through the design process from start to finish or, I guess, close to finish. Now, what were some of the key things, the aha moments that stood out to you that you're going to take into future projects the.

Speaker 1:

I think the biggest thing, like when we, when we talk about mass timber projects, sort of um, as a practice is that on the design side, you, you have to play collaboratively together. You know teams make projects go and that's design team, that's owner team, that's construction team, and so it's really all working together and coming together to make it work is important and within that, like how you solve problems together collaboratively is important. One of the main takeaways too is often things in a mass timber building because we don't have a lot of extra right. They're pretty lean. You've got an exposed structure. You don't want to add more things than you need to.

Speaker 1:

You kind of have to figure out which criteria you're trying to solve for need to is you kind of have to figure out which criteria you're trying to solve for you've got um. You know we've got a um let's. Let's use an example we're doing a floor assembly right. So there's many things in that floor assembly we're trying to do. We're trying to structurally, you know, deal with the loads that we need um. We're also trying to have a no acoustic transfer between the floors. We also also need the fire right.

Speaker 1:

So we can, but we have to satisfy all three of those things, and one of them is probably going to be the tricky one, and it's going to mean that we have to make the decision kind of based on that hierarchy.

Speaker 1:

So it may not be structurally that we need something, but we may need it acoustically, and so what I find so challenging is that you kind of have to say yes, yes and yes, and check all the boxes and you have to kind of figure out, well, what's the real driver of the decision making. So you might say, oh well, actually we solved this acoustically, this floor, but if we go so thin on everything, it's going to have some weird vibration and people are going to hate the feeling of being in that space. And yes, it's maybe technically acceptable, but structural needs to beef something up, right. So then, so it's like, ok, well, how are we going to do that? And those are kind of the type of collaborative problem solving and conversations that I think are so interesting, because you know a great design minded people in any of the disciplines, any stage, we come up with such better solutions.

Speaker 3:

How did you tackle the sheer walls? It sounds like that you were able to use less concrete and more mass timber.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what's really cool about the project process is when we kind of started going down the path of this innovative mass timber structure, we applied to the Canadian government for innovation funding and so we received some of that, which was amazing. So there was a testing program to look at, you know, lateral system and how this would behave, do really detailed structural modeling for peer review to get this accepted. And what's really cool is that was kind of born by governmental support, which means that it's going to be shared with others, which is kind of part of this open source philosophy about how we do wood projects and who benefits from it and how we kind of all get better together. And so in that process we learned a lot about the CLT shear wall behavior, but also the brace frame behavior. And there was a really interesting moment where some of the early design thinking about how to achieve this all in wood wasn't quite giving us the values that we needed. And so tectonics, seismic resisting devices you might have seen those. They're kind of like the spring-based things. They have plates on either side and they dissipate force in an earthquake. Those were identified as a way to, as a pathway to kind of get where we needed to structurally.

Speaker 1:

What was really cool is that the owner yeah, these are the. The owner kind of loved this idea. One thought, hey, the aesthetic is kind of cool, it's kind of techno, which is great. It's honest about what's happening. And what's also pretty cool is that it took us from seismically acceptable to seismically resilient. So we are well above what the performance needs to be and we are in a high earthquake zone. We had a couple 4.5, 4.8 earthquakes a couple weeks ago and and unfortunately we don't have instrumentation in the building yet, but there's a research initiative to put some accelerometers in the building so that we can get some real data based on what's modeled to kind of validate some of the design very cool, nice man.

Speaker 2:

So moving forward. What's next for you? What's next for dialogue?

Speaker 1:

yeah, we're, uh, we're fortunate to be working on sort of a dozen mass timber projects at the moment. We've got, uh, three or four in construction, uh, and we've got a couple finished and we've got a bunch in design on the books. Um, what we're really excited about, I think, as a philosophy is, is a hybrid approach and that's kind of to structure. I would say mostly, um, you know, that's that's an important part for us about, um one, having lots of timber on our projects but using the right material where you need it and the right amount. So I think economy and efficiency, like from a design point of view and from an engineering point of view, is super important. And what's kind of cool is we are seeing, I think, in this newer generation of mass timber buildings, a pretty interesting combination of materials. We love timber and we want to use it in the right places and as much as possible, honestly, and there's really interesting kind of hybrid thinking about how we're framing these buildings up.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, hybrid's kind of been one of my personal talking points.

Speaker 2:

I've been mentioning it several episodes in a row now, so I apologize for people getting annoyed with it, but it's like you're absolutely right, it doesn't have to be all timber all the time. It's like there's right places, right applications for this and in the people that I talk to, it's like you can actually get overall more mass timber into more structures by taking a hybrid approach, because you can leverage the strengths of both different systems Right, and then maybe compensate for the weaknesses or the deficiencies in one another. And it's also like a great jump off point for more people to quote unquote like get their feet wet with mass timber. Because it's like, hey, maybe we're you know we would traditionally do this building in CFS, right, but hey, let's throw some mass timber decking on top of that, uh. And then it's like teams get experienced with it, they get familiar, they get their feet wet and maybe the next project is like, yeah, man, that worked great, let's either do it again or let's let's explore this timber thing like one level further, right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we've been finding that, you know. Maybe a caveat on the hybrid structures we love all wood structures, they're amazing too, but it's, as you said, finding the right solution for the right problem. Some of our hybrid thinking is coming into, like social purpose housing. You know social housing and also you know pretty tight budget student housing. So you know it's it's a way to make the timber shine and it's a way to hit, you know pretty aggressive budgets where you know if we went with this kind of amazing sports car of a mass timber building, we're not going to get there. But you know, if we can make some smart decisions, we can have, you know, the biophilia, the warmth, the beautiful spaces in the right places if we make kind of good decisions. And part of that actually in our workflow has been using lifecycle analysis, lcas.

Speaker 1:

I'm sure a lot of folks you talk to use this tool and it's like well, what is the sustainability story and where do we need to save carbon? So we're working on a pretty cool 19 story hybrid mass timber tower here in Vancouver. It's multifamily residential, so it's got a mix of three bedrooms, two bedrooms. One city of Vancouver up here has a family housing policy so it will dictate. You know this is the mix you need because we can't just be building, you know, studio or one bedroom apartments for people, and so for that tower, it's what's really exciting is you do the LCA and you realize all the carbon in that type of structure is locked up in the floor plates, the, you know the rest of the structure you might have in beams or columns is a tiny percentage.

Speaker 1:

And so you go, oh well, where's my impact? Right? So it helps teams make the decisions about what the impact is. And if another owner, another opportunity, might say, well, I want the look, right, I want the look of glulam columns, and that's important to me to go, yeah, we can make that work too. Right. But on this project it was like the win is to have CLT floors and we're happy with like a point supported CLT system, kind of like a BCIT that you guys recently had on and lots of other structures. But I found that I'm excited about this LCA process, not as like reporting but as a design tool to make good choices along the way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, man, that's a, that's a. I never thought about it kind of in reverse or as in forward thinking. I guess when I look at an LCA I was like, oh, here's the end project results, right, I never thought about using it as a tool to inform the design throughout the process. That's, that's a pretty unique point.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that's important, I think, too, for conversations with owners is, you know, looking at a baseline building and you go, hey, we're thinking about mass timber with you because you've asked us to go, just so you know, like, this is how, if we did business as usual, it's going to perform. And this, this is, this is how a timber building would perform. Um, and one of the things, you know, a tip that we've found has been really, um, captured owners imaginations and people when we talk about the projects is there's a, there's a really cool canadian wood council app that you can put in your volume of mass timber and and it will calculate, uh, the time it takes for north American forests to grow your building and like that idea of like, and so we've done, we've kind of taken that tool and done some other downstream calculations for people you know, even your local forest, things like that. But it's like wow, the idea that your building is grown in 28 minutes, right, Like your 10 story 180,000 square foot building. It's like that's grown in under an hour in the fiber that we have in North America, it's like what, what a different way of thinking about it. And you know, this, this kind of it's kind of funny, kind of comes full circle to um meeting with Walt Thistleton in London and they they described a meeting with the city of London when they were trying to get their project passed and they showed up to the meeting with a handful of tree seeds right and said this is how many trees it's going to take to do this building. This is your building and it's such an interesting, tangible way.

Speaker 1:

And I find people are so creative about making this more personal to people, more something that you can wrap your head around and experience.

Speaker 1:

And so you know, going forward to, one thing we're doing as a practice is putting a lot of energy into looking at the sustainability of mass timber. It's not really our bread and butter. But to talk to experts in forestry and fiber management and things like that, because we have the same questions as other people do, right, Like what, what's going into these amazing engineered products? And we want to be a little bit more fluent in that and what we're really excited about I'm going to speak it into existence because it's been flying around for a bit and hasn't landed, but the idea is we want to do like a forest to frame tour when we get out and see forestry practices. We go to the mill, we go to the CLT plant and firsthand talk to people who are working in this world and say what are your challenges, how does this happen? And then also kind of verify that by having conversations with researchers, independent review folks and say you know what's kind of the state of the forest? Are we kind of all on the right page?

Speaker 3:

Sawmills are some of the most fascinating, exciting and scary things that you'll ever see. See, it's just. The size and scale is just unbelievable. They're zipping those trees through there at you know fractions of a second.

Speaker 1:

More people need to see from that, from the seed to the building, type of uh, the story that that follows yeah, and we're you know we're not unique in this like others, uh, in our industry and in the space are doing things like this, and that's great, because we need that to, to be at the forefront, because the public asks right, they, they, they love. I think they love what we're doing in mass timber and I think it's exciting. People think it's kind of beautiful and amazing, but you know, everybody wants to feel like we're. We are doing something sustainably and moving in the right direction.

Speaker 3:

Right, well, this has been incredible. Before we ask our last question, where can people find you and where do you hang out professionally? Are you on LinkedIn?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. That's probably the best way to get a hold of me. I love chatting Timber Probably spent too much time doing it. So if you're interested or if you want to kind of work on something together, please reach out. If you're ever up in Vancouver, drop me a line. We can grab a coffee or a beer. That's probably the best way. You know dialogue, the practice. I work with you can find us online our website, you know, also a big shout out.

Speaker 1:

Projects take tons of people to do, so I won't go through them individually, but if your project catches your eye, look at the whole team list. Don't just look at the design credits. Look at structural, look at the acoustic folks, look at the GC, because each one of those folks has a story to tell on a project that you're interested in and they've got a really unique perspective about what it takes. So, honestly, and to other designers, share the love with your project teams, full project team. If you're presenting at a conference, throw the slide up with everybody. Yes, it's hard work and it takes a little more effort, but everybody appreciates it.

Speaker 1:

I was lucky enough to present recently and through the name of our CLT supplier and our steel trade up and the steel trade guys were so thankful and they said, hey, like, let's get a recording of this. I want to show it to our guys in the shop, because this is what their hard work does, right? This is, this is what you're spending your day in, day out, and and for them it was important to be mentioned but also the pride they get in seeing their work out in the world and people acknowledging their contribution. I learned that from some of the best in our space in the mass timber world folks who are happy to share credit, to share knowledge. I hope we see more of that as we're surfing this big tidal wave of timber.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, me too. So last question let's say you got somebody in an elevator for 30 seconds and you're trying to tell them about mass timber. What's your pitch to them?

Speaker 1:

I would say let's build a more sustainable future, let's build in a beautiful way, let's do it in a way that gets people excited, inspires them.

Speaker 1:

There's a quote that I keep coming back to lately uh, it's the role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible, and I I think that that's a big part of what we have, we can do in the mass timber community, and people have been doing is is don't lecture people on what you, what you think the world needs to see. Do it. Show them how amazing this can be and make it. You know, know, the most delicious broccoli you've ever seen. Don't just tell them you need to eat your broccoli, but go hey, look, look, this can be, this can be more beautiful, this can be more sustainable. You know, don't you want one of these? And so I'd say the process of getting there together is is amazing. Like I love the process of working on mass timber projects I hope you know our owners do. I hope our GCs feel the same love, but it's that collective team problem solving. I think that I wouldn't be able to replace any other way, Dude, best answer I've heard to that question hands down.

Speaker 2:

So oh, thanks Cool.

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Brady Potts

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Nic Wilson

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