Mass Timber Group Show: Sustainable Building Experts

“It’s Time to Do Something About It” | The Philosophy Behind Better Buildings w/Peter Ewers

• Brady & Nic

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What strategies can architects use to design buildings that are truly sustainable in both structure and energy use? How does mass timber play a crucial role in achieving net zero performance? Join Peter Ewers of Ewers Architecture as he delves into his innovative approach with the Foothills Unitarian Church project, debunking misconceptions about mass timber costs and exploring effective energy strategies for sustainable building design. Whether you're an architect, engineer, or construction professional passionate about sustainability, this discussion offers valuable insights to elevate your projects.

Connect with Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterewers/

Ewers Architecture Website: https://www.ewersarchitecture.com/

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

Speaker 1:

Materials that we use are hugely important, because some of those materials have a very high embodied energy content, or use materials that we don't really want to be using, or they're harvested in such a way that can hurt our environment.

Speaker 2:

How do you design buildings that are truly sustainable, not just in structure, but in operational, energy use and long-term performance? Today's guest, peter Ewers of Ewers Architecture, has spent decades refining the art of holistic, sustainable building design, and his latest project, the Foothills Unitarian Church, is a perfect example. This project didn't just use mass timber for its beauty. It was a strategic choice that aligned with the client's vision for a low-carbon, high-efficiency, net-zero building.

Speaker 3:

Peter breaks down why mass timber is just one piece to the puzzle. He debunks the idea that mass timber is always a premium material compared to concrete or steel, and the energy strategies that helped this project achieve net zero performance.

Speaker 2:

If you're interested in designing buildings that are sustainable from the ground up, this episode is for you. But before we dive in, if you're serious about stepping up your mass timber game, networking with the best in the business and even 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. Go to masstimbergroup to grab yours before the early bird pricing expires. So with that, let's get into it.

Speaker 1:

Great Hello. I'm Peter Ewers with Ewers Architecture. I'm here at my office in Golden, colorado, a renovated two-room schoolhouse that was built in the 1860s, and we're taking care of it for a few decades here before we turned over to the next owner, and we just love this open space. We love what we do and we really, really focus on sustainability in all that we do, both commercial and residential architecture. In all that we do both commercial and residential architecture and it's important to us because we believe that humans have damaged the Earth's and our resources over the millennia and it's time for us to do something about it. And, as an architect, we're uniquely positioned to at least do something about the buildings that we build and how they use energy and how they use materials.

Speaker 2:

And before we started recording we were kind of talking about sustainability in buildings holistically and we're definitely going to talk about your mass timber project here in a second. But can you talk to me about what else is really important to be thinking about when you're designing these buildings from a sustainability aspect outside of just the structural materials?

Speaker 1:

Sure, when we say the word sustainability, it covers such a wide, wide range of what we do. There's the energy aspects of it and using as little energy as possible and using as little energy as possible. There's the comfort aspects of it making a very tight, well-insulated building that's easy to heat, cool, using the sun in ways that develop daylighting so we don't need as much light. Using the sun to heat in the winters here in Colorado is important, and the materials that we use are hugely important, because some of those materials have a very high embodied energy content or use materials that we don't really want to be using or they're harvested in such a way that can hurt our environment. So all of those things need to be taken into account. It's not just one or the other. We're not just making an all-electric building or just making a well-insulated building or just making a healthy building.

Speaker 3:

All of those things have to be taken into account off the cliff was for the mass timber world is the foothills Unitarian church. And we were talking a little bit earlier and the light bulb kind of went off, because you're like, well, it's a very simple fabrication, you know, it's just a big slab of wood and some beams. Can you talk a little bit more about that and why you were hesitant in the beginning about mass timber? And then you're like oh this is not as hard as everyone thinks.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, um, yeah. For us, uh, getting into a new material or a new way of doing things is finding the right client. Who? Who wants to do that as well? Uh and um for this, for this uh project, we were thinking we'd really love to use, uh, clt, cross laminated timber, timber or mass timber of some sort. And so we identified this client who is very socially aware, wanted high levels of sustainability and wants their building to demonstrate that.

Speaker 1:

We thought, well, this is a great entry into that world of mass timber and it felt like the right client. And where would we use it in this building? Right client, and we need where. Where would we use it in this building? Where can we get the maximum bang for the buck? And uh, so we thought, well, that that beautiful uh ceiling that we want in the in the sanctuary, uh, having that be wood, would speak to the not natural environment that this uh, this client wants and speak to. You know, natural beauty, natural materials and uh. And so it was a, it was just a perfect solution to to bring that wood uh into the ceiling of the sanctuary. So when you look up, you see that and you get the warmth. I mean just not unlike my ceiling here in our office, which is not mass timber in 1866. So, yeah, it was really a very, very elegant solution to the desire to use mass timber and to the client's desire to have a healthy building that speaks to their mission and their ministry.

Speaker 2:

What was the cost conversation like with your client, because sometimes people say, oh, clt definitely comes at a premium. Can you kind of walk us through that journey and that conversation with them?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely the cost. This was not a limitless budget. They had a tight budget. We had to be very careful of where we spent every dollar and throughout the design being fairly new to mass timber, I was waiting for that other shoe to drop to say, said you know, if you want that wood, look on the inside. This mass timber is not not costing you any more money. So it would have.

Speaker 1:

It would have been that we would need to have the client say, no, we don't care about what it looks like, we just want the space built. But they did care what it looked like and they cared what it, how it spoke to uh, to their congregation and to their, uh, their care of the environment. And so, uh, if we went to say a steel structure, uh, you'd have, you'd have, uh, your your um, metal decking that would be spanning between the beams and uh, and then we'd have to figure out how to put wood on the underside of that. And so instead we just have wood as the structure. It's spanning between these steel beams spanning about 10 feet and uh, laying that on top, we get a very simple structure.

Speaker 1:

We've got the beams, we've got this four and a half inch mass of wood, uh, and then we've got rigid insulation and the, and then we have a standing seam metal roof on top of that and it all works together beautifully and we get that nice thin edge that we wanted on the outside. We really wanted the overhangs, and so it was not, you know, to answer your question, it really was not a cost add. To answer your question, it really was not a cost add. And that's the win-win situation when we can do things that maybe would be using a little more expensive material. But if you look at how you're using it, use it in an appropriate way and use it in the way that material wants to be used, then it doesn't need to cost any more. It doesn't need to cost any more.

Speaker 3:

The cost is always one of the biggest things that's going to stop somebody from getting a project through the finish line, but it's also interesting, like the longevity of these projects. It was you said the roof is a mass timber above you, but did you say that was from 1866?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, oh yeah, Well, actually this wood is more recent than that. It had a fire 25 years ago, 27 years ago, and we rebuilt after the fire and did the wood ceiling at that time. But it's just an applied wood to the underside of the roof structure, which would be typical for wood frame construction of our last several hundred years, wood frame construction of our last several hundred years.

Speaker 3:

Well, I just bring it up just to kind of talk about how wood can last for hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of years if you take care of it perfectly. I know the team that you had was KL&A engineers and builders, and then you had Pinkard Construction, and so what better of a veteran team in there to come in and say, yeah, you can do this and then make that project happen for the church. So this is a good, feel-good story.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it really was a feel-good story and this was Pinkard's first CLT project. They had a mass timber project but it was more built up plywood and they said it didn't look nearly as beautiful as the ceiling of the sanctuary of foothills. Unitarian.

Speaker 2:

I want to come back. You you kind of breezed over it, but you talked about having the overhangs off the building and we'll put some pictures up here so people can see it. Uh, but with the, if you didn't use mass timber before we had talked, before we had started recording. Rather, you had talked about hey, there's some, some dual span uh capabilities with mass timber that don't exist for some other building materials. Can you kind of talk us through that little portion there?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we really, uh, we wanted that thin edge, look, and we wanted the, the slab of the of the um uh roof to span beyond all edges of the uh of the exterior walls. So you have the exterior walls coming up and then you have this nice clean uh roof line. Uh was a thin edge and uh, it was we, we, we pushed the limits to what we could with the, uh, with the CLT and uh, as we were doing that, we realized you know what? We couldn't do this with steel, uh, with the CLT, uh, you've got, you do have one strong, uh strong axis and that's spanning the 10 feet from beam to beam. And then, at the outside walls, uh, our structural engineer, calin a, said we can cantilever that three feet beyond the exterior wall to get that nice three foot overhang.

Speaker 1:

Uh, that we're looking for. And, uh, you can do some of that with steel. You know, span the, the steel decking out. But the clt does have a weak axis and in the weak axis we could span the clt 18 inches beyond the exterior wall. And uh, and so we got that. That, look we were looking for. And we realized, you know, if we were doing this with with metal decking? Metal decking has zero capability of spanning in the other direction. It's just, you know, it's ribbed and if you stick that rib out it's just going to kind of sag and you have to support that. And we didn't have to do that with CLT. So we got the look we were looking for in a very simple, very simple way.

Speaker 3:

And there was some other sustainable aspects about this project net zero. You also talked about this project net zero. You also talked about this vrf, this variable refrigerant flow system. What are some of these new things that are coming on online these days, where maybe you don't have to drill so deep into the world, into the earth.

Speaker 1:

yeah, you know, as a, as a firm us architecture, we decided, uh, several years ago that we were only going to focus on all electric buildings, with, uh, with the clients who desired to pursue net zero energy, and so we don't use any natural gas in our buildings, only, uh, only electric systems. And in colorado, and with all the heating season, more typical is to use natural gas for the heating season and that is, you know, it's becoming easier and easier to get away from natural gas with these VRF systems. They're all electric, it's a heat pump system, and a lot of people are familiar with what they call mini splits, which are more of a residential style and it's just a grownup version of a mini split. They've been using them in Europe for many, many years and over the last decade or so they've gotten more and more traction in the United States. And it makes our job a lot easier because we can use this air source heat pump to heat and cool a building like this. And I wouldn't say it's easy, but with the right engineers and the right client it's getting easier and we're thankful for the clients who do want to pursue that, because every project we do, we're learning a little bit more and uh and making it easier for the next one.

Speaker 1:

So uh, but yeah, all electric net, zero energy, uh, high levels of insulation. We don't really pay attention to what the code minimum is. We do what is right for the building and doing energy modeling. So you have your energy model that tells you what's the optimum amount of insulation for the exterior and air tightness. We're looking at very closely window selection and all of that. You talked earlier about the holistic nature of sustainability and that's what all of this plays together. And that's what all of this plays together. Clts are one great part of the sustainability aspects of this project.

Speaker 3:

I was curious to know real quick about the natural gas. You talked about how you were going all electric. What are some of the downfalls?

Speaker 1:

to using natural gas is that it is a petroleum product and you're burning, you're taking petroleum out of the ground, where that carbon was sequestered for forever, and instead we're taking it out of the ground and then we're burning it and so we're releasing carbon dioxide into the air, and that is one of the major causes of global warming.

Speaker 1:

So we want to get away from that. And if we can use electric systems, and especially a project like this, where we've got photovoltaics on the roof that are generating all the electricity that's needed for this building throughout the year, that's where we get that net zero energy that when you look at an entire year and you look at the energy used in the building and it's all electric, and you look at how much electricity is being generated by those photovoltaic panels on the roof and those balance each other over the course of a year, then we've got a net zero energy building. Other over the course of a year, then we've got a net zero energy building. And so if we're generating the electricity that we're using and we're generating it from the sun and we're not burning fossil fuels, then that's the win-win situation. That's where our buildings balance themselves and don't contribute to the negative impacts on our environment.

Speaker 2:

And there's kind of like two sides to the carbon that's going into building. You have, like, your operational carbon and then your embodied carbon and I think, like you know, marrying both sides of the coin comes together for that best outcome. Right, using lower carbon building materials, but then also making the most out of the energy going into it.

Speaker 1:

building materials but then also making the most out of the energy going into it. Yeah, yeah, you're talking about the um kind of the future of where we want to go. There is is to to have to be able to say that not only are we, uh, not using excess energy to heat and cool our building and operate the building throughout a year, but can we go back and even offset the carbon used to make the building itself. And, uh, that is where you know all, all of us who are in the sustainability realm are, you know, looking toward the future of can we get to that point? That's sort of the next we're at the plateau of. We know how to do a net zero energy building. Now can we do a net zero carbon from including all of the materials that go into the building is a higher level, but CLT certainly is a great way to get to that level because we're sequestering that carbon in the wood and it's a very low embodied energy product.

Speaker 2:

Well, we really enjoyed learning about the church project that you guys did. It's super amazing. It's very beautiful, as everybody can see on the screen. So what's next for you? What are you looking forward to working on next? Are there things that are really exciting? You right now, in your world. What are you looking forward to working on next?

Speaker 1:

Are there things that are really exciting? You right now, in your world, we are looking forward to the next client who wants to push the levels of sustainability wherever that is, and different things are of different importance to different clients. So we have a residential client right now who has multiple chemical sensitivity and we've really enjoyed uh learning how we can even push that envelope and and make the building healthier and healthier. We thought we, you know, uh, thought we already did a pretty good job in that, but that's pushing us. You know beyond, uh, what we knew before, uh and um, how building building out of earth, building using off-site construction, is of great interest to us, and actually that's a place where CLT can shine as well. There we're always, we're always looking for clients who want to push that, push that limit and and push us into a new direction. So I don't know what that next direction might be.

Speaker 2:

So it's, it's not like a super grand scale, but I've always loved, uh, earthship style buildings and I'm always wondering like, hey, how, how do we do this with all timber, uh, all mass timber? Right, and I think that's kind of like my pie in the sky dream house, um, is like an earthship made out of mass timber. Uh, if, if you could, if you, if you had, like the client came to you and said go hog wild. Like what? What are your like top three things that you're doing with this building on a sustainability front?

Speaker 1:

Oh gosh, um, that's a tough question. Uh, we're really interested. There are uh earth blocks that we've been looking at which are uh kind of like Adobe blocks, but they're uh uh not built on site but built off site and building with those are interesting. Uh, any way that we can eliminate uh, uh eliminate polystyrene and vinyl, those materials? We experimented a little bit with some block material like insulated concrete forms, but not using polystyrene. I think, looking beyond the normal ways that we do things and looking for, uh, looking beyond the the normal ways that we do things and and looking for uh materials, uh, that that can, uh that are, that are not the norm that you know. When it's going up, people look at it and say what are they building there? Uh, you know, that's what. That's what interests us and what uh keeps us looking for the next project.

Speaker 2:

Yeah love it. So if people wanted to connect with you and learn more about what you do, where can people find you?

Speaker 1:

Oh, our website is pretty easy to find if you know how to spell our name. But if you just search on Sustainable Architects, colorado Ewers Architecture will come up. I always tell people as E ewers it's like a female sheep a u with an rs on the end um, maybe that helps them remember link it down below. There you go. Yeah, if you follow that link to our website, we're pretty easy to find. And uh, come on, stop by our office here in golden and uh, we'll show you around well, absolutely.

Speaker 3:

I don't know if your schedule allows it yet. I know we got the Mass Timber Group Summit coming up and KLNA is going to be there. We'll have a representative from Pinkert Construction and we can talk about your project there in person August 20th 2025. So people know where to sign up for that and I don't know if your schedule still allows for that to come.

Speaker 1:

Maybe I've got it on my radar and uh yeah, so very cool yeah just go to mask number dot group for everyone to sign up.

Speaker 3:

Tickets are live and but. But here's our final question if you could have a magic wand and you can change one thing in the industry, what would you change and why?

Speaker 1:

oh wow, you didn't tell me you were going to ask that.

Speaker 3:

But yeah, golly.

Speaker 1:

You know, I think one of the things that's really hurting our industry right now is the high cost of building, and if I had a magic wand then I could, you know, roll back prices 10 years, uh, or at least have them have risen less, less. Uh, it would that. That would be a huge benefit it I? We hear time and time again that people want to do something they even they want to do the right thing, they want to they something they want to do the right thing, they want to, they want to build better, and sometimes dollars just get in the way and uh, so that would off the top of my head. I think that is. That is something that I know a lot of people are working on, especially in the uh, uh, affordable housing arena. Uh, that's where it's really hurting a lot of families. Uh, that we are having a hard time, uh, housing, uh, everyone that that needs housing, and housing them in a more sustainable way would be, um, uh, would be a gift to our world for sure I hear that.

Speaker 3:

well, I think the world is on a fast track to make better and better and bigger and bigger, and you know less energy, you know better carbon, all of this stuff. So, and it'll be help with people like you. So thank you for sharing this word and and we will see you soon, I'm sure.

Speaker 1:

Thank you very much, I appreciate it.

Speaker 3:

I take care.

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Brady Potts

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Nic Wilson

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