GLY has a long-standing involvement with Forterra so when the opportunity surfaced earlier this year to join them for their Building for a Sustainable Future 2020 event, we jumped on it! The day-long get-together of industry leaders explored the opportunities and issues in creating a sustainable cross laminated timber [CLT] and other mass timber market in Washington State. Check out Forterra’s excellent event recap here: 2020 Recap.

CLT lessons learned

GLY is working with Rowley Properties, CPL, and VIA Architecture on 2005 Poplar Way, a four-story office building in Issaquah, Washington. With the support of a sustainability-minded client, we had the opportunity to explore what it would take to convert a steel building into a mass timber building.

Could it work on the site? Did it make sense for the project? Could we do it cost-effectively? Rowley Properties saw immense value in incorporating mass timber into the project in some way even if a 100% CLT building wasn’t in the cards. The result is a beautiful, mass timber cantilevered roof that you can’t miss as you drive into Issaquah on I-90. We shared our early lessons learned in working with CLT in one of the Building for Sustainable Future 2020 panel discussions that you can watch here: Early Lessons Developing with CLT in Washington.