Timberlab

8 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 5 Ascent is a 25-story luxury apartment building that contains 273,000 square feet of mass timber. In December 2022, the company topped out the timber structure installation of the first tall timber building permitted in the State of Washington, called the Heartwood. “It’s an exciting project because it’s eight stories with 126 units of workforce housing for Seattle, a city that is in great need of housing for middle-income residents who are making 60-100 percent of the median income. That’s a pretty monumental project for the industry.” The Heartwood is also one of the first mass timber projects built under Washington State’s recently adopted Type IV-C building code which requires a two-hour fire-resistance rating for a building’s components. Fire resistance is yet another virtue of mass timber, even though it seems counter-intuitive to accept the fact that large wooden structures could be equal to, or sometimes even surpass, the fire resistance of concrete or steel. But the fact is that many historic buildings, the large fabric mills, for example, that proliferated throughout the northeastern U.S. in the mid-to-late 19th century, were built with heavy timber construction – floors and beams that were four inches or thicker. “During fires, these components tended to have just localized damage and not a full loss of the structure,” Evans relates. “People logically think that wood burns; but large timbers char. Bigger timbers have a smaller surface area and larger volume ratio, so it takes longer to ignite and ends up tending to char. These heavy timber buildings are naturally resistant to fire and perform really well if designed the right way.” Timberlab markets its services to three main types of clients: private developers looking at either residential or office development; build-to-suit corporate clients building out facilities they intend to occupy, themselves; and public works projects, i.e. municipalities, community centers, universities, etc. That being said, Timberlab’s portfolio continues to shift, depending on ever-changing building codes, growing acceptance of mass timber as a viable construction option, and unforeseen events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. “Five years ago, a lot of the building product that was being built with mass timber was