What Every Mass Timber Designer Needs to Know about Facades w/ Chris O'Hara of Lerch Bates

Most mass timber conversations focus on the structure. That’s the easy part. It's everything at the edges, where the timber meets the facade, where the floor meets the wall, where the warm inside meets the cold outside, that determines whether a building lasts 20 years or 200.

Chris is a structural engineer and senior design principal of StudioNYL, a Lerch Bates company. 
He's worked on 25+ mass timber structural projects and another dozen on the facade side. On many of them, he's done both. He breaks down why aluminum facades act like cookware and how moving insulation to the exterior keeps condensation away from your timber, why the biggest moisture threat to mass timber is the rainstorm that hits mid-construction, how panelized facade systems speed up weathering-in but introduce thermal risk at the stack joints, and how fabrication advances are letting timber replace aluminum as the spanning element in curtain walls.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Essentially a lot of facade elements are made of aluminum. And one of the other things we use aluminum for is cookware, right? It's made to transfer heat or transfer thermal energy. And we keep building facades out of it. So that's going to cause certain par parts of the facade to sweat or cut uh condense. And if that hits our our lumber, we got a problem.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

What determines if your mass timber building lasts 20 years or 200? Is it how it's engineered? Is it the connection detailing? Maybe. Today's guest would say it's the envelope. How you protect your timber from moisture during construction and for the next hundred years. Today's guest is Chris Ohana, founder and principal of Studio NYL, now Lurch Bates. For over 20 years, he's lived at the intersection of structure and building envelope. 25 mass timber structural projects, another dozen on the facade side, and on many of them he's done both, which gives him a perspective almost nobody else has. Chris has worked on incredible mass timber projects here in North America, like the Penn State West Science Building and the U.S. Forest Service Museum in Missoula, with its 13 different species of timber and custom fabricated tree joinery. Here's what we're going to cover today. First, thermal performance. Why aluminum facade systems act like cookware wrapped around your building, and how moving insulation to the exterior keeps the dew point outside your weather barrier so you don't get condensation degrading your timber. Second, construction phase moisture risk. The biggest threat to your mass timber is not rain over a 50-year period. It's that one rainstorm that hits mid-construction. We'll cover how panelized facade systems get your building weathered in fast, but how you have to detail them correctly or you risk thermal bridging that can cause moisture problems later. Third, we'll get into the critical transitions and interfaces. The cheese grater problem at shear walls, why lifting glazing 18 inches above mass timber floors allows condensation to dry before reaching the timber, and how floor-to-wall interfaces can become failure points if you don't detail them right. Last, we're going to touch on how advanced prefabrication capabilities are now enabling complex bearing cuts that minimize steel connections and let timber carry loads directly. And that's unlocking designs that were literally impossible to do 10 years ago. If you're designing, engineering, or building with mass timber, this is a conversation you need to hear. Because as Chris puts it, getting the wood to work in the middle is easy. It's everything that happens at the edges that determines whether your building lasts 20 years or 200. All right, let's get into it.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Hi, I'm Chris O'Hara. I'm a senior design principal with uh Lurch Bates until recently. Well, we were studio in whale until we joined Lurch Bates. I'm a structural engineer by training, but um I balance between structure and facade in the building world.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

All right. And what uh what kind of brought you into this mass timber space and and where you are now with the company?

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Well, um, you know, obviously as a structural engineer, I've always designed with a wide variety of materials. But you know, being that we're based in Colorado, you know, timber is kind of the the vernacular of our uh architecture in Colorado. So heavy timber has just been what we've always done. Like we talk about mass timber now. We've been designing with things that you would qualify as mass timber for over 20 years. It's just the way we design, and now we just have different labels on things.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

What's kind of been your experience with mass timber projects today? Like you got a number you guys have worked on, or what's that look like?

SPEAKER_00 3:28

God, it's hard to keep track. I think we're up to on the structural side, uh like 25 now. And then if there's probably another dozen that we've done on the facade side um in addition to that. Many of them we do both structure and facade, but uh there's a bunch of others floating around that we've gotten to play with.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Got and so the the main point for this conversation between you and I today is like merging structure and enclosure on a high level. What are we going to be talking about?

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Well, really, you're talking about a material that um doesn't like to get wet. You know, if anything, you know, wood is made to move water from the ground up to the outer reaches of the tree with the xylem or what moves water, flow and moves nutrients, but it's made to move water. So if it gets wet on the end grain or something like that, it can cause the wood to deteriorate over time because as it's not living anymore, it's not able to manage that water itself. So we're always thinking about that, not just in how we design it, but how we construct it and how we protect it during construction.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

And because of the unique properties of wood that other you know materials might not have, what uh what are we looking at here in terms of like main buckets of considerations?

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Um, well, given it's an organic material, I mean, it can deteriorate, right? Wood, you know, after it's been cut down or it left to its own devices in the environment will degrade over time. And we don't want our buildings to do that. One of the beauties of using wood in buildings is you you prevent that end of life of the timber that is gonna put off carbon dioxide eventually. So encapsulating it and letting it live on in the building um is taking all that benefit. Uh, so it's a huge advantage to us in that regard. So designing around that challenge of how it's going to degrade if left to the open environment is part of our goals, whether that be through how we treat it to preserve it, if it is left outside, like a siding or a deck or exposed timber on the exterior of the building, whereas on the interior it's a lot easier provided we keep the building from leaking or having condensation or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

And so if you were sitting down to somebody that never designed uh a mass camera building, what would be kind of like your top four, top five things that you're like, hey, these are things that we need to consider and we've got to get them right?

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Well, structure the first thing is is module. Like let the material do what it does best, let it cook, set the rhythm of the building such that um you're maximizing the material so it doesn't turn into something that becomes an economic conversation. Um next is you know, steer into the details. The joinery is a huge, huge element tip for me when it comes to wood uh or of any kind, whether it's mass timber or conventional. It's oftentimes we're governed by those connections more than anything. And then uh as we start to get into how it relates to the overall architecture, is like getting it to do more than one job. How does it start to tie into the envelope, which is obviously one of my passions? How do we protect it? How do we get it to live a long life?

SPEAKER_01 6:29

And then I guess the other thing is speed. For sure. So let's get into the envelope here. When you're looking at uh a project, what are you what are your main considerations and like goals and objectives that you're trying to achieve with the envelope?

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Um, really, it's it's getting the building to perform well thermally. Um the air and water, like making sure water doesn't get in your building doesn't leak, it's pretty obvious, right? Everybody does that. But what often happens is how we deal with a thermal envelope can start to result in condensation. So, you know, it's like when you have like a glass with ice in it and water, you start to see uh moisture on the outside. That's condensation. So as we start dealing with our envelope in that regard, we want to avoid that condensation building up on the inside of the building. Like some buildings, you don't really care. If it's all masonry or concrete or stone, it's a durable surface that if it gets wet, it eventually dries. But with timber, it can start to spread within that timber, like that xylem once again, and it'll flow and then sit there and eventually uh degrade the lumber. So we're always trying to manage that uh process um and how we deal with the potential for condensation. So we can design the envelope to perform better so that we don't get condensation. That's the ideal. But it starts to get more and more challenging as, like, say, floor systems or roof systems meet our exterior wall, and you get this large mass of wood, including the in grain of the wood, right up against the facade of our building. And so, how do we detail that? Uh, the other thing, you may have heard the terms like uh thermal bridges uh or something like that. Essentially, a lot of facade elements are made of aluminum. And one of the other things we use aluminum for is cookware, right? It's made to transfer heat or transfer thermal energy, and we keep building facades out of it. So that's going to cause certain parts of the facade to sweat or uh condense. And if that hits our lumber, we got a problem. So always tuning around that what's the right material, what's the right choice? How do we arrange uh the different parts and pieces so we don't get that condensation is uh what I'm thinking about.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

And when you're looking at that detail, are there certain things that stand out to you that it that you found to be like go-to best practices? Like getting granular like in the grain as well?

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Yeah, I think mostly using low conductivity materials. And one of the things that's nice is wood is low conductivity compared to most other building products, right? So even when we do have you know a timber beam going inside to outside, that's not usually my problem. Usually it's around where we're attaching the cladding or we got a glazing system, you know, uh up against it, because obviously the the opaque portion of the building where we have all that insulation and wonderful stuff, that tends to perform a lot better than where we have a window. And then when that window is surrounded by aluminum, it's even worse. So that's the conditions, all those transitions of system to system, or where the floor meets a wall, these are the conditions I worry about the most and really want to make sure we're separating the cold from the warm.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

And when you're talking about different um non-opaque assemblies, right? Like what are what are some of like the danger zones like people get into trouble when they're trying to like work with a material like wood versus if they've got steel, et cetera, in the same place?

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Well, the steel's got the same problems. It's just, you know, the steel isn't going to degrade or um you know potentially rot like wood would um in these conditions. So they run into the same challenges of conductive material at these transitions, right? Where you have that aluminum or that window frame. So having a less durable material when it comes to moisture just means we have to be a little bit more vigilant. Technically, we should be this vigilant anyway. This is what we should be doing in buildings, but the more and more you look at what is uh code minimum, if you will, that is often not something that's checked. Um, you know, a lot of times buildings tend to have insulation within the stud cavity. Like if say it's not a CLT bearing wall, right? It's a stud wall, and maybe it's point uh sorry, post and beam kind of supported mass timber. And those will probably try to minimize the amount of outboard insulation and then put the insulation in the stud cavity. What that does is starts to draw what they call the dew point or where that moisture is going to condense into the wall assembly. And so if you have a wood stud wall or it's right up against the floor system, it can start to become a problem. Whereas if you put all the insulation to the outside, like you know, when you get cold, you put the sweater on the outside, right? You don't swallow it. It's gonna work a lot better. So that's like the true opaque. And then when you move over to where the window, which if you've ever sat next to a window on a cold day, you can feel it's a lot cooler right there than it is, say, against the opaque area. There you're leaking a lot more energy, and as a result, that condensation is more of a risk unless you uh mitigate it by how we detail these things, prevent metals and aluminums from going inside the building to outside the building, and uh use uh less conductive materials like wood or um like fibroinforced polymers. So basically um stronger plastics, if you will, they're essentially akin to plastic, but very low conductivity. And that helps a lot.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

So does this go back to like in terms of like the architectural drawings, like maybe not putting windows and stuff in certain places for better performance, or like where's the solve here?

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Yeah, it's uh we do think about that a lot. Like one of the moves we do often, especially with like larger commercial buildings where they want what they call a curtain wall, where the glazing systems go floor to floor, the aluminum around the perimeter of the glass is where it loses the most energy, right? Center of glass is where the window performs the best. So what we try to do is make it so that we don't have what they call the stack joint or the horizontal portion of the of the window frame right up against our mass timber floor. If we lift it up like 18 inches, if there is any condensation potential, it does have the potential to dry before it gets to the wood. And because once it hits that mass timber, it's gonna act like a tree. It's gonna start spreading that moisture around and it's gonna be harder to get it to dry out. So that is definitely uh a great move that we uh we go to quite a bit is just avoiding the floor to wall interface as much as we can with the conductive materials or the heat loss materials like windows.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

So in play, so I understand, you know, primary objective would be like let's not create this challenging detail, let's move some things. But in a scenario where let's just say that's not possible, what do you have to do maybe to the timber or to uh the assembly itself to kind of mitigate those concerns?

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Um, those we just it's really about designing the thermal envelope correctly, like so that um we can eliminate that condensation potential. So not allowing the aluminum just to go right through the facade. A lot of these glazing systems will have what they're called thermally broken systems where they'll have like a polymer linking, say, inside aluminum to outside aluminum to kind of it's not technically a break, but it does reduce the conductivity and prevents that. And then how we detail that transition to make sure we have the right amount of insulation and we don't have that metal going inside to outside. Um, we do it all the time. It's kind of standard practice for our office to detail that way anyway. But there's a little bit more vigilance when we're dealing with timber because especially when you get to smaller scale projects, a lot of them want to you know build all their perimeter walls that aren't CLT, just with you know, two by six, two by fours, cavity insulation. And those aren't really appropriate. So if we put the insulation on the outside, tune it right to the building coat, and then do the transitions to the glass correctly, we shouldn't have any condensation at all if it's designed properly. It just takes attention to detail and thinking about how we're gonna build. So, how would like panelized or modular facades fit into this conversation? That's a great question because uh one of the challenges of modular facades is they tend to have a lot more aluminum. And as a result, they tend to perform a little worse, which means there is more risk of condensation, especially at what we call the stack joints, which is where the horizontal condition where one panel below meets the panel above. That's one of the reasons we I mentioned earlier we kind of lift it to 18 inches. Um so they do have some thermal challenges to them, and which we just have to design um into the connections, into those transitions, better thermal performance. Because the reason we go to those systems and the reason we like them so much in the mass timber world is we've been talking a lot about during the design life of the building, moisture getting in. The biggest risk of moisture on a mass timber building is while we're building it, right? What happens when it rains in mid-construction or you get a foot of snow during the construction period? And there's things that they do like we'll pre-top RCLT panels with a temporary roofing and stuff like that. But I've seen buildings where you can see a rainstorm coming, there's just water pouring into it. So the quicker we can get these buildings weathered in and get the enclosure on, the better. And the other you know, great equalizer economically for mass timber that we're always steering towards is the faster we get it built, the less general conditions on the project for the general contractor, the speed quicker speed of sale. Like it's one of those things that when we're trying to fight different economies, this speed is what always saves the day. So if we can marry the speed of mass timber installation with the speed of a unitized curtain wall or a panelized facade system, now we're getting the best of both worlds. We're protecting it during construction, we're getting to sale quicker or getting to use quicker, reduce general conditions on the contract. There's so many different ways we start to um create equalization of cost, if you will, to try to make these things, you know, pencil out.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

That makes a lot of sense. And so I understand, you know, NAS timbers come panelized, some can be modular, et cetera. Same thing. It makes sense to marry it with an enclosure system that works in the same way when you talk about benefits of speed. Uh, I'm hearing that sometimes those systems come with some trade-offs in terms of maybe thermal bridging, et cetera, like things that we had talked about. Uh, is there an extra care and extra detail can come in and mitigate those concerns? Does that extra process going into your detailing create added costs that could offset the panelization of the facade? Or is that just standard practice, you just have to change things a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 16:57

It's really more about thinking about the layering of our buildings, like where is the glass plane relative to the installation? I mean, there are certain geometries where yes, it definitely costs more. But if we're willing to, you know, bring the architecture in and really tune the systems of, you know, ideally you want the glass, center of glass to be like in your wall section to be somewhere within the depth of the installation on the perimeter. If we can start to tune these geometries and how they meet, we can actually make them really cost effective. So it's not um, it doesn't have to be more expensive. Now that said, sometimes architects want buildings to look a certain way. We want certain glass planes to align with other planes, and things like that can add cost. But um more often than not, we can tune it and try to keep that cost down just by steering into the strengths and weaknesses of different materials and systems. And you know, picking the right system is part of it, you know, understanding okay, we we chose this particular unitized current wall, what does it do best? How does it want to be supported? Where is the thermal line? How does it install? Or some other punched window or other glazing system. How do we tune those to work best with our structural system and the way we're going to insulate the opaque assemblies? Because it doesn't have to be more expensive. It's just understanding strengths and weaknesses and tuning it.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Can you give me some examples of maybe the projects that you worked on where you've said, like, hey, all of this came together beautifully, like a standout project?

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Uh yeah, there are a bunch of them in prior. Well, the one of the best that's finished is the Penn State West uh Science Building we did with PayAd Architects. And there's a myriad of glazing systems in that building, and they're using um an acoustic dial laminated timber on that one, which is just gorgeous, just recently finished. That one um we got a combination of conventional just stock aluminum systems. We've got custom long span systems, we got like a serrated wall that we're we're tuning things by serrated. I just mean the the whole outside of the building zigzags. So there's a lot of different play on that one. Um another one that's gonna be done soon, is uh it's one of the more proud moments we have as a a designer in mass timber is the U.S. Forest Service Museum. I'm not sure if your earlier pod, but Julian got to talk about it. But it's um it's obviously for the U.S. Forest Service, it's a Missoula. What was that? Yeah, and that's like a mile from my ass. It's like a mile from my ass. That's one of ours. Um, so 13 species of mass timber. We did the facade on that, as well as uh the joinery for all the timber trees, which is a whole different fun story of computational design, trying to get each tree to be a different species and all the joinery and complex uh geometry that went with that to support the folded plate uh mass plywood roof. It's gonna be uh probably one of our proudest projects. And that's with uh Leo's Weinsaw, Tom Chung, who's kind of like one of the OGs of Mass Timber in the US, you know, doing the the UMass project that he did, as well as uh the first mass timber project at University of Arkansas. He's he's kind of great to work with when it comes to mass timber.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Uh can you get into like the detailing on that project, like specifically maybe around like facade enclosure?

SPEAKER_00 20:16

And actually, it's one that's got a great cautionary tail, I think, because uh, you know, being one of the things we often find is it's hard to get uh mass timber shear walls to cost out. Like so we end up doing brace frames or other ways of um managing the lateral system. But this one, you know, we did have enough opaque wall, and the goal was to use mass timber shear walls. But what ends up happening is the connection of those shear walls as they kind of meet the ground, and what we refer to like in a normal, like say, wood frame shear walls, like a hold down, they become you know pretty massive, especially given the height and the geometry of this building. So all that uplift, we have these plates that come down and attach it to the foundation. Well, to get the screws to be efficient, they're all kind of at a batter, right? So the plate on the side of the mass timber, it looks like a cheese grater, right? So it's like all these different, like you got all these angled pieces come in and all these jogs. So imagine trying to waterproof that. Like you put like a rubber membrane over that, it's just gonna tear to pieces. So um, as we're building that and trying to get enough insulation over it as well as get the membranes to work, there's a lot of tuning of that geometry that was critical. Um and it's one of those ones, you know, it doesn't show up very well in a even a 3D model unless you've done it a few times. So helping the contractor work through those details of how do we protect the membranes and get over the metal. Because keep in mind the wood's not that conductive, but the metal sure is. So that's where where we really needed the insulation over the uh steel plates linking it to the foundation. So that was probably the hardest detail in the whole project uh from an envelope standpoint. And uh that critical thing is so that joinery and how how the timber meets. Isn't just a structural challenge. It's every other system that ties into it. Because getting the wood to work in the middle is easy, right? It's uh it's just simple structural engineering. But when you get to these connections and how to do it efficiently and be either beautiful in the case of the trees where we're exposing all the timber joinery or the shear wall, which we're hiding all of it, you never see it. But there's a lot of um performance-related elements that come in there, whether it be the thermal envelope or the air and water. So that was uh just getting that boxed out and uh smoothed out so we didn't tear the membranes to pieces was challenging. Um otherwise, on it, you know, since we did use so much mass timber in the walls as opposed to stud walls, it was easy to put the insulation on the outside. I didn't have to have that argument. But how we transfer the glazing systems into those walls and get the glass plane in the right condit location to tie to the um insulation adjacent, it was all absolute good fun. I don't know if I realized you're in Missoula. I might have to send you over to site every now and then to get any photos because uh I don't get them as often as I'd like. Hey, I I literally try to buy it like four times a week. Yeah, it's an amazing project.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Yeah, I've been watching it go up uh and I'm excited to see when it gets done and you'd actually get a walk in there and see it. Uh one of the big things I've heard people talk about is you know, timber's uh a natural material. It breathes, right? It cycles moisture. Uh tell me about what you guys are doing and thinking about in terms of insulation, like materials, systems, et cetera. Like how's that all come together to specifically address what or does that other materials don't?

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Um well, we're we're always trying to get uh everything outside of the weatherproof free membrane to drain to the outside, and then the material we just have accept that it's going to drain to the inside. So actually, exposing it is something we like to do. Let's air get to it, let's it breathe in that regard. But you know, the biggest thing is comes back to the condensation, getting adequate amount of insulation so that the dew point or where that condensation will occur. Because if you think of like an assembly, whether it's a roof or a wall, you know, there's the temperature inside, say it's 70 degrees, and then it's minus 20 outside. Everything from the inside to the outside is going to be a grading of temperature between those two, right? And so depending on the conductivity of the material in that condition, it starts to do you know steeper slopes or bigger jumps, if you will. Whereas if we put enough insulation on the outsides, things that are not conductive, that there's gonna be a temperature where that you know water vapor is gonna turn to you know liquid water. We want that to always be outside of the weather barrier. So long as we do that, we're we're gonna be okay. Um, then we design the exterior cladding systems to dry, right? Because the other thing we don't want is some of this insulation can act like a sponge, and holding moisture up against our weather barrier is also not good. So we usually use what we call a drain back ventilated rain screen where we're getting and promoting air movement behind the skin or the cladding or whatever the building looks like, right? And that air movement dries the insulation, dries the membranes so that they perform over time. And um, these kind of strategies are really critical to getting these facades to perform properly, whether that's reducing our heating bills or in this case, try to protect moisture migration into the building through condensation. Um, other challenges, especially with uh with you know, wood, is like one of the beauties of having a CLT wall is I can attach my facade cladding wherever I want, right? Because I don't have to go, I don't have to be out there with a stud finder, right? The whole thing is structure, it's easy. But as a result, people tend to just throw a lot of fasteners through it. And if you put a waterproofing membrane on it and you start firing fasteners through it, I start perforating it. And some of these membranes are designed to what they try to use the term self-sealing or self-healing, and it's not entirely true, but they're always based on nails. Whereas with facade, oftentimes we're fastening it with screws. So we're being careful with how we manage that detail. Oftentimes what we'll do is just put like a little bit, almost like we're icing a cake, put a little bit of silicone on the wall and then fasten the fastener through the silicone. So the threads draw that silicone into the hole, and then we seal over the top of the fastener just to prevent you know us perforating or waterproofing, if you will. Um, little tricks like that are things we find that are relatively easy to do while we're building it. Um I know I went and meandered a little bit for your question, but I'm just trying to think of the other lessons learned in that regard. It's um, you know, we often use terms like uh the pen test, right? Where you take your drawings and you take your thermal line, your air and water line, you start going around the perimeter. And if I ever have to pick up my pen because something got in the way, that's where it's gonna leak. Or that's where we're gonna let thermal energy in or out and cause a condensation problem. So we're always kind of using that methodology of checking our details to make sure it is continuous and we do maintain um a robust continuous uh envelope.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

So let's I mean these might be elementary questions. You you let me know, but let's talk about like long-term building owner occupant impacts of if if you mess these sinks up. Like what are they what are they up against?

SPEAKER_00 27:16

Oh well, from a durability standpoint, if if you're getting moisture migration in your building, it it will, whether it's wood or not, you know, if it's a mass timber building or if it's a steel building, you're gonna deal with damage and um degradation of the the building. It is just good practice to have you know these things taken care of, whether it's traditional air and water or if it's um the thermal condensation. I mean, the air, I kind of glance over the air. The air is an enormous issue because if there's any holes in that that lets air through, it it's gonna bring moisture in with it, and then it's gonna end up sitting on your material. Like I most of the time we can handle air and water in kind of the same way, but oftentimes what we'll do is we'll have multiple layers of air barriers. Yeah, the trick you you get into with, like you might have heard the term vapor bearer, which is usually your primary waterproofing layer. Um, you can't have two of those because if you have two of those, the water gets trapped between it, and then you have a real problem. Then you get mold growth and all kinds of horrible things. Whereas air barriers, we can stop the air as many times as we want because it's still going to promote drying, right? The vapor is going to be able to get through it and things of that nature. But we don't want you know, full-on air with moisture in it coming in and out of our building because it creates more problems. Um, that said, wrapping it up like a mummy or anything like that either. And there are other things that people don't realize, paint can be an air bearer. You know, so there's different things like that that are inherent to our systems to help mitigate the flow of air. Or, of course, water is the obvious one. You see straight leaking, people lose their mind. But um, there's also when you talk about wood, there's also like UV degradation and how often we're maintaining it. And this is one of the conversations we have as we start bringing the mass timber outside, right? Um, it's gorgeous. So we want to show it off everywhere we can and uh understanding how we're gonna have to maintain that wood when it is exposed. You know, how often are we planning on staining it? What are we willing to let this building look like it's uh been on Cape Cod for 50 years? Or is it something where we want it to always have that warmth that we think of as wood, like what's sitting behind me? You see, you know, this wonderful warm wood everywhere. It's there's there's a place and time for all these different systems. And you know, unfortunately, wood does degrade over time outside, but there are you know things we've done uh to mitigate that, whether that's through sealing or maintaining it, through uh staining it or even charring it. You know, we've done a lot of different things like that. Uh, there's a lot of um thermally modified woods that we use, uh like a koya, things like that, when we're talking about our skin as opposed to structure going inside now. But we've we've played a lot with a koya, does some really cool stuff with it, just because it's it's such a malleable material, like just like any timber that we can cut into forms. We did a um a facade for Louis Vuitton in Mexico, which is just you know, it's all Louis Vuitton logos over glass everywhere, but it's a Koya. It's this gorgeous warm stain on it, and the light just shines through the gaps in the wood that makes it look like a myriad, it looks like a Louis Vuitton purse of made of timber. So it's super cool. But you can really accentuate the timber that way, but with something that is durable, that is going to last a long time because it's a thermally modified wood. There's a house we did in Boulder not too far from where I live, that is just this really intricate uh pattern of cut. Uh almost looks like a board and batten, but it's a quoia and it's all digitally fabricated. It's done by Spearhead, which I'm sure you've heard plenty on this podcast. Those guys are great. Um, but it's uh it's a really durable facade because of the type of wood we chose to expose, as opposed to just like pressure treated, you know, duck fur or something. It's it's much better. And there's materials like redwood, cedar, things like that that we also look at.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

Things that we haven't talked about yet, but you think are super important that the mass timber industry is practicing or definitely peeling back another layer and looking into. What falls on that bucket?

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Oh, things that they're starting to get into. Um, you know, I I think the biggest jump has been our capacity to uh mill and cut uh the timber has changed the way I look at design. Like when I was designing mass timber buildings like 10 years ago, I was always trying to be careful with the cuts, right? Trying to make it something that was reasonable and not crazy. And thinking about the geometry and how these come together to keep it simplistic. Now, with the equipment that these guys have and ingenuity in the modeling, the more complex cuts are worth every penny now because it mitigates how much steel I need a connection, how I'm, you know, say hiding a fastener from a fire condition, or like there's things like that that we can do that is so, so much better than it used to be. Um, because once again, it's the joinery that drives so very much into what we do, and being able to make the woo wood do the work is fantastic, or get the mass timber to be in a condition to do what it does best rather than forcing it into tension or having tons of fasteners going through the material, which just weaken it and cost splitting and things like that. We can get it to bear because they can do complex cuts. Like I, you know, you thought about the trees for the U.S. Forest Service Museum. You look at the way those members are cut, you know, they could be like eight different planes on a four by four and get it to bear properly as it transitions, because that particular project was super cool, and that all these timber members are coming at different angles with different load conditions and all the different things coming in to be able to get that uh milled and cut so that everything went into bearing as much as humanly possible to minimize the pins, to minimize the amount of steel um was really quite interesting. You got another project we're doing in Boston. Um it's almost trying to break my record for the number of roof planes per square foot. It's like a 1400 square foot building that's you know, it's gonna be uh uh kind of a demonstration project slash um coffee shop. It's meant to be it's meant to draw people in a place called Post Office Square, which is like a park right over a below grade parking garage. And it's like, I think we got 20 different roof slopes, all CLT, three and five quad mixed in, depending where it makes sense. Green roof, you name it. It it's it's all timber everywhere until it gets down to the parking garage. It's absolutely gorgeous. We just put it in uh for permit a couple of weeks ago. Uh, also given that environment where it is uh from a building code perspective, and given that it wants to have so much glass on it, thermally, it's one of the best buildings we've ever done. Like trying to tune it like a wash to get it to perform right. It's designed to be naturally ventilated. It's like every trick in the book in one building. Um, it's really kind of neat. Um but the ability to do, I couldn't have built that 10 years ago, is the point. Is the way all these planes come together, you know, how we get them to bear on the glue lamps in transition, we couldn't have done that project. Um, whereas now it's uh they're like no problem. It's now it's just figuring out who the right vendor was for the material. Not now, but at the time, it was you know, are we bringing it from Europe? Are we getting it from Nordique, uh, are we getting it from the the Northwest? Like tuning that out was really the biggest challenge on the project because it is so small and bespoke. Uh it took some doing. Sorry, I go on a lot of tangents with you.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

Well, I'm excited to see that one. You're no, you're fine. I mean, we were just in Boston. Obviously, you guys are in the permit phase, so it's not gonna be built. But next time I'm in Boston, I'll make sure that I swing around and take some pictures. You guys, you guys might just have to like subcontract me out.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

I think the other one I get excited about because I'm I'm sitting here looking at my other screen is uh timber curtain walls we do often. They're you know, rather than that aluminum, that conductive problem child I mentioned earlier. Um, you know, we take all the smart bits of the glazing system, which we refer to in our office, the veneer curtain wall, which is where we capture the glass, where the thermal brakes are, where the how it works, and then the dumb aluminum box you see in these buildings is just structure. Well, we can tune timber to be structure. So, and the beauty of of using timber is I can make it any geometry I want. So, whereas these aluminum curtain wall systems are really good for going floor to floor, like say 10 to 15 feet. You know, if I go to timber, I can go 30, 40 feet, just size the glue lamb accordingly and make it work. And then you hit the beauty of the lumber, you've got you know the sustainability of using you know uh a proper material, an organic material for the facade. Uh yeah, we just was speaking of Boston, we just finished uh one there where you've got like a 40-foot span skylight, all you know, glue lamb-based curtain wall that was like 25 feet tall, all glue lamb with a historic library, they're similar in all glue lamb facade. It's it's really neat what we can do with it because the aluminum extrusions uh they make certain sizes because they mass produce these things. Whereas the when we use that timber structure to support the glazing system like this, we tune it to what we need. So if the span needs it to be six inches deep, it's six inches deep. If it wants some other module on the mass timber, we we do that. And um, it's it's great for especially once we get to like lobbies and taller spaces, it's really neat.

SPEAKER_01 36:53

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it sounds like you guys are working on like some pretty impressive and fulfilling projects, and then you're talking about things that you couldn't even have built 10 years ago because of where the industry is now today. Like, is there anything that that really excites you about maybe like the next 10 years in this space?

SPEAKER_00 37:09

Um well, I've always loved uh grid shells. Um, so trying to get more of uh a lamella grid shell concept in some of our buildings. We're studying a few now for uh more of on like a stadium level of integrating that into it. Um it's coming for us. I mean, people have been doing grid shells for a while, so that's one of those things that are I'm probably a little late to the game and jealous. But um the Lamella concepts are things we use quite often where it's it's just kind of how you layer beams and create moment connections and how the geometry uh forms and tessellates or the patterns you create, you you can simplify connections and get things to span really quite far. Um and that's something we're we're using more and more in our our systems. Um trying to think what else I'm excited for that I'm allowed to talk about. Um, one of the other ones that we're doing about structure facade on, I think Julian might have spoken about the Southdale Library in um in uh Adina uh near Minneapolis. That one's a really neat one. Once again, it's all about getting that envelope to perform well to protect the lumber, given that we're in such a uh extreme climate from a cold standpoint um with that particular library. But um yeah, the grid shells, I think, are the ones I'm most excited about and how we can get large format going. Perfect.

SPEAKER_01 38:33

Well, man, this is I've I've actually learned a lot, and I I think I say that almost every time that I interview somebody on something I haven't talked about before. But like I've no I've not talked about uh this concept with anybody. Like it's generally just like structure, structure, structure, structure, right? And so um this has been fun. Thank you for kind of unpacking this for me.

SPEAKER_00 38:53

Well, I'm I'm biased as a structural engineer. That is definitely the best part, but the uh the failures or the problems I see in the industry is not concentrating on the envelope enough. And that's I I'm kind of eager for people to really be thinking about how do we manage that moisture in our mass timber buildings so that they last forever and nobody comes up with an excuse to stop doing them because it is the right thing to be doing from a carbon perspective. They're beautiful. You know, it's it's a material that we're just at the beginning of. As more and more people are doing more of them, the cost uh is going to be more and more conventional and they're they're so malleable. It's crazy what we can do with it. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

All right. And uh for people that are listening that want to talk to you more about the work that you do, where can they connect with you?

SPEAKER_00 39:38

You a LinkedIn guy? I am a LinkedIn guy. You can find me on LinkedIn, and I'm sure I'll get you a pass on that. Um we are, as I mentioned, we're now part of Lurch Baits, but you can still find us at studioal.com. We're gonna keep that website for a while just because uh the branding of how we approach architecture is still gonna be through that. But uh there'd be a lot of exciting stuff for that as we get in a new year of uh we've got such a massive team now that we didn't have before, where we're doing all this bespoke work on our own. And now I've got an army behind me to really hit the next level, which we're fired up about.

SPEAKER_01 40:11

Oh yeah, man. Well, I'm excited for you. Uh thanks again, and uh we'll I'm sure we'll be seeing around the industry. Thanks a lot. I appreciate you having me.