When it opens up to tenants later this month, the Ascent, a 25-story, $125 million luxury high-rise in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, will offer an array of swanky amenities, including an indoor dog track and spa, electric car chargers, and a golf simulator.
Mass timber uses compressed layers of wood as columns, beams and slats, among other components. Those layers are binded by glue, creating a steel-like piece of wood known as cross-laminated timber (CLT).
That transition took a hefty toll on the environment. Buildings (their energy use and construction) account for about 39% of global CO2 emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. Almost one-third of those emissions come from construction and building materials, like cement.
Although there have been important advances in passive architecture and building structures that are more energy efficient, that still leaves the question of what to do with all that concrete and rebar once a building comes down.
Fernández said CLT buildings also offer better insulation and indoor air quality than steel and cement buildings, too, as many feature exposed wood walls that don’t need paint or additional finishing.
Construction costs for Ascent were about $253 per square foot, according to a Nexus Media analysis. Cost comparisons between timber and steel and concrete building projects vary, but some studies indicate that wood construction is still pricier. A study published in 2021 in the Journal of Building Engineering estimated that the construction cost of timber building is about 6% higher than the modeled concrete building.
Cities in Northern Europe have been building with mass timber for two decades. Fernández says U.S. building codes lag behind. New York City, for example, only updated its building codes to allow for mass timber in buildings up to 85 feet (about six stories) last year.
Developers for Ascent ran into this issue. Korb says his office spent more than two years working with Milwaukee officials to design a building that fit into the city’s code. “Their concerns were largely based around fire,” Korb says. “Most of the testing that we did—or that had been done and we used—was about fire safety.” Testing revealed what the developers already knew: CLT buildings have been shown to be fire-resistant.
Gokhman believes that once developers and insurers become more familiar with CLT, more mass timber buildings will rise—and costs will fall. “Mass timber looks better, it’s faster to work with and more precise, it’s lighter, takes a smaller labor force to assemble, and of course, it’s environmentally friendly,” he says.
Fernández agrees. “Once contractors become experts in putting up large mass timber buildings and the market showcases them, there could be a major uptick in demand,” he says.
Korb’s firm currently has a 12-story building in design for San Francisco and is finalizing details to build another in St. Louis.
A version of this article was originally published by Nexus Media News.