In Oregon, cross-laminated timber is a trending topic, with its promise of sustainability, smart design and family-wage jobs. But outside the world of timber and forestry a campaign has begun to sink the emerging building product.

Last month, the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association unveiled its “Build with Strength” initiative, complete with a slick website, professionally-produced video clips and public relations staff. Representatives of the concrete industry confirm CLT has in fact cut into its market share. They say they’re tired of taking abuse, and are starting to “push back.”

The 91��Ƶ looked into this with British architect and CLT champion Andrew Waugh and structural engineer and NRMCA Senior Vice President Lionel Lemay.

Quality and craft

By the end of a half-hour interview about CLT, Waugh was “heated.”

He said he gets that way when he’s called to defend the emerging building product from detractors in the world of concrete and steel. Waugh has dedicated his career to CLT, and thinks all issues in construction should be viewed in context of climate change, so he has big problems with how products like concrete are produced.

It’s dug from an open-cast mine, generally in a developing country, which Westerners generally don’t consider, he says. And the shipping involved and the days-long heating process are far from sustainable.

“Concrete is a heinous and a poisonous product that is bad for the environment,” Waugh said. “We do need it – for roads, for foundations. We often need it for bridges, and we definitely need it for dams. But we don’t need it for buildings.”

CLT, on the other hand, is made of wood, which stores carbon.

“Our buildings weigh a fifth of what a concrete building weighs,” he said. “They take 10 percent of the deliveries to site.”

Last year, Waugh met with representatives of the Portland Business Alliance on tour in London and was inspired by their “passion, interest and vigor.” Among the contingent was Valerie Johnson, operator of the D.R. Johnson lumber mill in Riddle; she talked with him about rural economies. He heard LEVER Architecture founding principal Thomas Robinson talk about “forest to frame.”

“I thought, that’s fantastic,” Waugh said. “You know, I’m going to copy that.”

Waugh visited Portland last month to talk timber as a guest of the PBA. Fielding questions for three days can teach a person about the mood of the public, he said.

“The excitement here and the passion here for sustainability, for innovation, for quality and craft – it’s all here,” he said. “You have every single thing going for you, and you’ve got trees. You’ve got people like Valerie Johnson. You have a proactive timber industry, and that’s what you need. It really is about the individuals.”

Waugh first learned about CLT in 2003, when it was used for the Olympic Village in Turin, Italy. His firm, Waugh Thistleton, built its first CLT building three months later. Today it has 23 live projects employing the product, and a number of high-profile buildings in its portfolio, includingthe tallest timber residential building, Murray Grove, and what will be the largest CLT project in the world, Dalston Lane.

There are more than 500 CLT buildings in Europe. Due to more restrictive building codes and a lack of established production chains, there are only a handful in the U.S. (The Oregon Forest Resources Institute is aware of six to eight CLT projects under construction or complete in the U.S.) But this could quickly change.

While in Portland, Waugh met with a group of contractors at the Albina Yard project. He said builders have expressed apprehension.

“You know, it’s new,” he said. “It’s the first time in 100 years that there’s been a fundamental change in construction system. They’d be mad if they weren’t nervous.

“People in the concrete and steel industry mistakenly see this as a threat,” he continued. “They should see this as an opportunity. This is our VHS-Betamax moment. What those industries should take as a threat is climate change. What we’ve been doing as an industry, and I include architecture within the construction industry – it makes me very unpopular with architects – what we’ve done as the construction industry, in reaction to the biggest calamity that’s faced humanity since the Black Death, has been to, you know, stick some solar panels on it. Stick a windmill on it. I mean, it’s insane.”

Among the changes under CLT, costs will be arranged differently, Waugh predicts. They’ll be more transparent, for one thing, because around one-third of the construction costs will come from one source.

“You’re reducing a lot of your opaque costs,” he said. “There are fewer people on a job site, and they’re there for shorter periods. Fewer trades, and for those trades that are there, it’s a far more straightforward process.”

Though much recent media attention of CLT has focused on its potential in high-rise construction, he considers that tact wrongheaded. The fact is super-tall buildings are not efficient.

“The other problem with putting Photoshopped images of tall timber buildings in the press is that ultimately what will happen is that it will become a style, and like every other style, it will go the way of the bell bottom. And then maybe in 20 years’ time, it will come back. But it’s not the way to do it. We need to rethink, reappraise, re-evaluate and reimagine the way we construct buildings.”

‘Build with Strength’

In a guest column in the March 25 edition of the News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., CalPortland CEO and NRMCA Chairman Allen Hamblen explained why his group has taken aim at CLT.

“Simply put, just because wood is abundant does not mean its use should be incentivized for construction projects like schools and multifamily housing,” Hamblen wrote. “Long story short, we fight for concrete because we know that the construction industry, even right here on timber’s home turf, is not united behind the idea of tax credits that bank economic growth on a single product, especially one as risky as CLT.”

The op-ed coincided with the rollout of the “Build with Strength” campaign, which contains an “unprecedented communications strategy,” a multi-city media tour and “rapid response capabilities,” according to a news release trumpeting the initiative’s arrival.
At the forefront of the public outreach effort is Lemay, who oversees sustainable development for the NRMCA. CLT is inferior to concrete in terms of durability, safety and cost, he says.

“The thing with the wood industry is that they don’t like to cite scientific research because it doesn’t support their argument,” he said.

Lemay cited work by the Forest Stewardship Council and Massachusetts Institute of Technology civil engineering professor Jeremy Gregory (Gregory has told the 91��Ƶ he only studies, and doesn’t endorse, building products). Concrete fares better than CLT in LEED and Green Globes building certification programs, Lemay added.

He called the idea of carbon sequestration a “myth,” and accused CLT proponents in the wood industry of “greenwashing.”

Far less carbon is stored than CLT advocates admit – about 15 percent, according to a 2007 Wilderness Society study, Lemay said.

If researchers look at a building’s entire life cycle, instead of just the manufacturing phase, concrete is the greener product, he said.

“The scientific research shows that concrete buildings have lower carbon footprints than wood buildings,” he said.

Lemay called concrete less harmful to the environment than timber, which he said still relies on harmful strategies like clear-cutting and pesticides.

A major argument of “Build with Strength” is fire safety. The group says CLT burns hotter and longer than conventional wood-frame construction, to the point where fire sprinklers become exhausted and a building collapses more suddenly. Neighbors of the site where a Manhattan wood skyscraper is planned are up in arms over the danger inherent in the project, according to Lemay.

“The wood lobby is going to tell you that wood doesn’t burn,” he said. “It’s amazing that they would make that claim.”

The post Material differences: CLT becomes divisive appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.