Suffolk Downs Innovation Center: On the Boards

Located in the hub of the Boston area’s largest new transit-oriented development, the Innovation Center will be the area’s first new mass timber office building when completed in 2023. The Center will be the signature showcase of a nascent mixed-use live/ work neighborhood near Revere Beach. It will comprise 60,000 square feet of co-working office and administration spaces, a community room, retail, dining, and maker space, as well as a public green roof terrace that overlooks the campus’s main public plaza. The development’s main event space will host a variety of meetings, lectures, concerts and receptions during the day and in the evening.

The key design challenge for this project was to create a big visual impact for a compact, mid sized building, highlighting its innovative wood structure. We achieved this through a roof design that delivers the impression of expansive space. Technologically advanced, its sweeping curved form creates a dramatic presence and evokes the built language of nearby beachfront pavilions. Inside, the exposed wood ceiling soars above the co-working office spaces. The expressive wave-like roof profile incorporates both new and old timber technology, marrying curved glulam beams with the efficient use of modular flat CLT panels that double-span across them. Fabrication will employ cutting-edge CNC milling technology for high-precision, prefabricated panels as well as centuries old methods including giant jigs and wood clamps.

John W. Olver Design Building at the University of Massachusetts Amherst: Recipient of an AIA 2020 COTE Top Ten Award

The Olver Design Building was our firm’s first mass timber project. Bringing together the previously dispersed Departments of Architecture, Building Construction Technology, and Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, this 89,000-square-foot building fosters multidisciplinary collaboration. For students using the spaces, the building itself is both a learning environment and a teaching tool for its integrated departments. Originally conceived with a conventional steel/concrete frame, the firm’s collaborative relationship with the Building Construction Technology (BCT) department at the University of Massachusetts created an opportunity to explore the potential of alternative mass timber construction instead.

The critical design challenge in this large project was articulating a solution that expressively integrated architecture, engineering, and landscape in the building’s central, trapezoid-shaped ‘Commons’ courtyard. Functioning as the structure’s physical and spiritual heart, the Commons acts as a three-sided courtyard that spills out through a café and entryway, down into the main campus, and invites the campus in. Above the Commons, a roof terrace is an outdoor counterpart to the space below, serving as a virtual ‘classroom’ for the landscape architecture program. The key challenge for timber construction was designing a structure to span the irregularly- shaped ‘Commons’ courtyard that would also support the weight of a green roof above along with winter snow drift loads in a cost- effective way.

Adohi Hall: The largest CLT building in the US and the first mass timber student housing project

This 708-bed, 202,027 square foot student housing complex demonstrates a pioneering use of cross-laminated timber and an innovative approach to live-learn communities, including embedded arts and academic spaces. Completed in August 2019, Adohi Hall is the largest cross-laminated timber building in the US and its first mass timber student housing building, supporting the economic potential of Arkansas’ burgeoning timber industry. ‘Adohi’ is Cherokee for woods, recognizing the enduring importance of native populations and sustainable forestry to the region.

The key challenge of this extra- large project was making mass timber a cost-effective structural choice in a new building typology. The structural properties and code consideration of mass timber influenced important decisions of massing and student room design. The design team worked to develop typical student room modules that allowed for the cost-effective layout of modular CLT panels and glulam framework while minimizing material waste. Plumbing coordination for the ensuite student bathrooms was a major consideration as well. The construction leveraged the prefabrication potential of digital CNC fabrication to coordinate and shop-drill the 4,113 slab penetrations.

The aesthetic appeal of wood lends a sense of warmth and intimacy to the building’s oversized spaces as well. Exposed structural ceilings and columns are apparent in each student room, study room, floor lounge, and ground floor common spaces. The cabin’s distinctive wood ceiling is framed in timber trusses that span the full width of the lounge spaces. Native cypress forms exterior soffits, entryways, and interior walls. Adohi Hall has galvanized the development of the mass timber industry in Arkansas and throughout the Southeast region of the US. Throughout the process of its design and construction, the project served as a laboratory and showcase for pioneering mass timber construction techniques.

Even after being cut, shaped, and assembled to create spaces, mass timber retains qualities as a once-living tree. It is hygroscopic, absorbing moisture to help balance humidity levels in buildings, and it moves as it swells and shrinks during the course of the year. Even in construction, as I was visiting our Adohi Hall project at the University of Arkansas being assembled, I couldn’t help but see its three-storey columns as a forest of trees. And in some cases, as I witnessed when visiting a centuries old Hanok (a traditional Korean house), I was greeted at the main door by a pine board still sapping after all these years, reminding me of its origin. As Kengo Kuma notes, ‘wood is our old friend’ and its familiarity as a material along with new possibilities given the digital technology of today makes designing in wood a profoundly rewarding endeavor.