The wooden workplace: is timber the solution to a sustainability dilemma?

The use of timber in construction has often been reserved for low-rise, residential developments, but today it’s becoming a more prominent feature incorporate real estate. Driven by a growing pressure to reduce the environmental impact of development, architects and developers are increasingly looking at engineered timber as an alternative to more carbon-intensive materials. The result? A generation of offices that are chipping away at the assumption of what timber can really do.

However, it’s not as simple as presuming that wood is inherently carbon neutral. When it comes to the organic material, whole-life carbon is assessed. This looks at the impact of a building from start to finish: the making and transporting of timber; the storage of carbon while the building is used; and eventually the maintenance or dismantling of the construction itself. Unlike concrete or steel, where the carbon calculation mainly reflects the emissions from producing the material, timber’s calculation is more nuanced, having to account for the carbon stored while a building is operational.

From blueprint to building

Hybrid use of the material has trickled into design over the last few years, with several notable large-scale projects having come to fruition. Walmart’s Home Office campus in Bentonville, Arkansas is one of the largest mass timber developments in the U.S, comprising of 2.4 million square feet of office and amenity buildings constructed from timber.

With Gensler and SWA Group helming the reigns of the development, 11 mass-timber buildings were designed across the project, spanning offices, parking decks, street-front retail and a coffee shop. According to Walmart’s Chief Talent Officer, candidates were three times more likely to relocate to Bentonville after experiencing the environment; all while Walmart’s broader sentiment of prioritising the planet was underscored.

But timber projects have gained prevalence in other corners of the globe too. Norway’s timber skyscraper, Mjøstårnet, is an 18-story mixed-use tower standing at 85.4 metres tall, primarily constructed from renewable local spruce.

Looking East, The Atlassian Central skyscraper, designed by SHoP Architects and BVN Architecture in Sydney, is currently under construction to become the world’s tallest hybrid timber tower. The 180-metre-high office is being built with concrete cores supporting the mass timber floors and internal structure, with an exoskeleton comprised of steel. The team behind the design expects to reduce the upfront embodied carbon by 50% compared to a conventional office tower.

The next chapter

Architecture studios Waugh Thistleton Architects and Mithun have designed a 12-storey mass-timber office block in Bellevue, Washington. Designed for Skanska, the Bevel tower will become the tallest timber office in the U.S. Talking to Dezeen, Waugh Thistleton Architects co-founder Andrew Waugh elaborated ‘Bevel will be our first built project in the US, but more importantly with a building of this scale it demonstrates that timber is ready to take its place at the forefront of American architecture.

Of the 22 tall timber buildings under construction or built, only three are commercial. A tremendous amount of work also went into gaining approval for the 100% exposed timber ceilings. In both areas, Bevel is setting an example that advances the options available to other building designers.’

As timber projects move from ambitious designs to completed testimony, the material is becoming a serious part of the conversation around sustainable construction. While timber might not represent a simple answer, it is an opportunity to rethink the fundamentals from which we build the future.