Much of the work by Kaiser Group and Path Architecture is found within a few blocks of the Boise and Eliot neighborhoods in inner North-Northeast Portland. That’s where projects like The Canyons, Carbon12 and The Radiator have helped demonstrate mass timber‘s potential as a building material.

Now, the rise in remote working technologies and software such as Revit has aided a new line of business for Kaiser + Path: consulting on mass-timber building projects around the world.

Kaiser + Path is advising project teams in Japan and New Zealand, as well as on the West Coast. Typically, the developers are most interested in cross-laminated timber and whether it’s a good fit for their projects, said Ben Kaiser, the local all-in-one firm’s founding partner.

“This is a worldwide conversation around the use of trees in mid- and high-rise buildings,” he said. “As our community grows, and our influence grows, so do our opportunities.”

More broadly, Kaiser + Path’s growing consulting work is a reflection of the rise of remote work and video conferencing technology. Increasingly, knowledge and expertise matter far more than location.

“There are no borders when it comes to computers talking to each other,” Kaiser said.

Architects can design on Revit software and have the CLT beams and other parts cut by a computer numerical control (CNC) machine abroad. For now, the two systems require an intermediary to communicate with each other, but a direct connection is coming, Kaiser believes.

“I bet within a year there will be a seamless connection,” he said.

The process cuts out shop drawings.

“Now we skip all that because the computer talks to the computer and cuts the product, with zero tolerance,” Kaiser said.

Oregon architects’ CLT consulting follows a path trod by their peers in British Columbia, Canada, where CLT construction first took off, said Iain Macdonald, director of the Tallwood Design Institute at Oregon State University. The rapid development of remote working technologies has accelerated consulting opportunities, he added.

“It’s more acceptable to not show up in person, so it cuts down on the cost as well,” he said.

Kaiser estimated that about 30 percent of his work hours go to consulting. Emily Dawson, Kaiser + Path’s partner and design principal, helps run the firm.

A big part of consulting jobs is persuading project owners of the benefits of CLT compared to more common steel-and concrete construction.

“We’re in the stage of convincing these development teams that mass timber is the way to go for the environment, for constructability,” Kaiser said.

In Oregon, lawmakers and business leaders have been keen to push mass timber as an economic development tool and a possible bridge for the state’s urban-rural divide.

Outside the state, environmental benefits are the top selling point. Mass-timber backers point to studies suggesting that such construction generates less greenhouse gas emissions than similar concrete and steel buildings.

“We came at the right time, because the entire world is now aware of the pressing issue of climate change,” Kaiser said. “People are really understanding with forest fires, flooding and the rise in temperatures, it’s significant.”

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Ben Kaiser, owner and principal of Kaiser Group + Path Architecture, believes the building industry can play a big role in reducing carbon emissions and combating global climate change by adopting mass-timber construction. So the multidisciplinary firm behind Carbon12, an eight-story mixed-use building in North/Northeast Portland that remains the tallest one in the U.S. made of mass timber, has decided to share its knowledge and experience.

Kaiser + Path is making available online all drawings, technical specifications and engineering documents related to Carbon12 at .

The obvious question is why?

“Sometimes I ask myself the same question,” Kaiser said. “It’s interesting because it’s such a new world, the world of mass timber, that we’d like more people to join us in the undertaking. We’re convinced it’s the correct path forward for the environment, but just us doing it by ourselves in Portland is not going to make that big of an impact. So we really feel the more people who can come and join us and build momentum, the better it will be for the environment and the timber industry in the Northwest.”

Portland firm Hacker is another early adopter of mass-timber construction, and recently moved into its new headquarters in District Office – a six-story, mass-timber office building in the Buckman neighborhood. Corey Martin, a Hacker principal, said he’s not particularly surprised by the decision by Kaiser + Path to release project documents.

“The mass timber movement is bringing together people and professionals in our world in ways that other things haven’t,” Martin said, “because the innovation and change in what’s possible is literally changing every minute as we work in real time. There’s a lot of mutual benefit for us to share. It’s like an open-source community that we have, so it’s fitting in with that.”

Carbon12, completed in 2018, took the industry by storm and generated substantial press for Kaiser + Path. The project team worked with city and state officials to circumvent restrictive codes limiting heights of wood buildings. Carbon12, at 85 feet, became the tallest building in the country with cross-laminated timber, glulam beams and columns, and other mass-timber elements.

“We were blown away by all the ways mass timber keeps improving the conversations,” Kaiser said. “We were glad we broke through the 65-foot height limit for wood; we now have a new precedent of 85 feet, and that was a big change for the United States.”

The project team knew it was the right path forward, Kaiser said. But additional benefits were found along the way. The project turned into a proving ground for mass timber, thanks to structural testing requirements pushed by the city and state.

“We kept discovering great things about the mass-timber products,” he said. “These are far superior in seismic events. These buildings are just 30 percent the weight of a concrete building, and you can imagine as you go higher, 70 percent less mass is a lot easier to restrain with regard to lateral forces.”

Mass-timber buildings also impact the foundation less, allowing their use on formerly polluted sites or brownfield sites.

“Carbon sequestration is why we got into it,” Kaiser said. “But the modularity, seismic superiority and the aesthetics all kept improving the conversation for us.”

Taylor Cabot, now a Swinerton Mass Timber project manager, served in that role for Kaiser + Path during the Carbon12 project.

“(Carbon 12) was built before codes, so we went pretty much where we wanted to go with it,” she said during a recent Women in Construction Week event. “There was no code path forward, and the city said, ‘This is beyond our scope.’”

The state of Oregon, however, provided more regulatory framework. The Oregon Building Codes Division was in the process of creating a method for reviewing cross-laminated-timber buildings for local jurisdictions and wound up collaborating with the city of Portland’s structural engineer, fire marshal and life-safety reviewer.

The result was a unique review process wherein the city was responsible for aspects of the building outside of the physical structure, while the state reviewed structural and fire and life safety elements.

“The good news is we took a pretty prescriptive path,” Cabot said. “It really allowed us to hear rumors or feel the feel of people getting nervous about what they were seeing and immediately addressing them. We’re still building a lot of buildings in Type III, but we will all be moving very quickly to Type IV, which has a lot of advantages and will speed up the process. I’m excited because this will allow projects to move through the permitting process a lot faster.”

The stream of industry inquiries and requests for information about Carbon12 also played a role in the decision to open it up for examination. Kaiser estimated the firm has given more than 200 tours of the building.

“That’s the exciting thing,” he said. “We’ve joined a like-minded community of folks internationally. If we were doing strip malls in Phoenix, no one would be calling us. But since we’re doing something innovative and exciting, we’re getting calls and visits from people around the world. That’s one of the nicest outcomes we hadn’t planned for.”

Martin wholeheartedly agrees.

“We all share the same consultants, the same engineers – there’s a lot of cross-pollination there,” he said. “Structural systems weren’t a thing we all looked at as a point of innovation for a long time in normal projects. But now, the structural system is this big question mark and this big point of conversation, so it’s really fun. That’s why we’re all wanting to share stuff.”

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