Business View Magazine | January 2021

37 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JANUARY 2021 FP INNOVAT IONS chain to allow connections between the forest products manufacturing and construction. Those are challenges for the whole industry. We are also looking at the speed of developing and deploying standardized solutions to take full advantage of the new building code provisions for wood. Everything is going so fast, so we need to push forward with what we are suggesting in terms of solutions, so wood can adapt to the market.” BVM: Can you describe the types of wood building systems? Karacabeyli: “In a nutshell, we have two types of systems. One is light wood frame for construction, done with dimensioned lumber. And the other one is heavy timber, which is now being rebranded as mass timber. “The light wood frame construction (also called 2 x 4 construction) started in the beginning of the 19th century and came all the way to the 21st century. The system has evolved but never lost its momentum. It always dominated single-family housing in North America, and then it dominated one to four story multi-family buildings, and since 2009 it is dominating five and six story multi-family buildings in Canada. “The heavy timber construction started at the end of the 19th century, and in the beginning of the 20th century heavy timber buildings with brick facades were the norm for mid-rise buildings. We have heritage buildings up to nine stories in Canada that are still serving their customers. One in Vancouver is 115 years old. By the mid- 20th century, steel and reinforced concrete came along and pushed the heavy timber buildings off the market. Now at the beginning of the 21st century, mass timber is making a comeback. And governments are backing it because it is a very sustainable system. Recently, we’ve started seeing some mass timber products like CLT in the light frame buildings, as the core for elevator shafts or stairwells, or as a floor. So, there’s an interesting evolution happening.”