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The Sforzacosta Preschool in central Italy was designed by Turin-based BDR Bureau in collaboration with the Andrea Bocelli Foundation (ABF). The building, completed in November 2023, features a compact and simple design using platform frame wood construction. The preschool includes classrooms, common spaces, and an atrium filled with kid-size musical instruments. The design emphasizes transitions and incorporates elements of nature, such as ample daylight and outdoor play areas. The interior is minimalist and uses tactile wood throughout. The preschool offers an arts-focused curriculum for 70 students and includes a kitchen, library, and art/science workshop. Despite the tight timeline, BDR Bureau also designed a toy for the workshop. The firm has a focus on designing spaces for learning and is currently working on other school projects in Italy and Belgium. [Extracted from the article]

The Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation Headquarters (OSSTF HQ) in Toronto is a three-story office building that showcases a hybrid mass-timber structure and high-performance building systems. Designed by Moriyama Teshima Architects, the building prioritizes financial and environmental sustainability, as well as democratic access to daylight. The structure features a cross-laminated timber (CLT) floor system, glulam posts-and-beams, and cross-bracing. The building's design and systems are projected to save approximately 60 percent in total energy use compared to a reference building, and the landscape design focuses on flood control and local habitat preservation. [Extracted from the article]

This article from Architectural Record discusses the rebuilding of a house in Malibu, California after it was destroyed in a wildfire. The architect, Lorcan O'Herlihy, had originally designed the house for his parents in 1987. After the fire, the new owners contacted O'Herlihy to design a new house on the same site. The new design, called Trancas House 2.0, retains some elements of the original house but also incorporates new features and materials, such as concrete, to enhance fire protection. The article highlights the architectural and design choices made in the rebuilding process. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the House in a Garden, a residence designed by Atelier Mey partners Christopher Meyer and Shawna Meyer as their own home. The house is the first mass-timber project completed in Miami-Dade County and incorporates sustainable design elements. It features a single canopy roof that unites the living units and showcases the mass-timber construction. The architects worked closely with local officials to obtain approvals for the novel construction techniques, making the house an important precedent for future mass timber projects in the area. The residence also represents the Meyers' commitment to mass-timber research and their collaboration with forestry experts to promote new markets for timber resources. The house is organized around a central courtyard and includes three outdoor living spaces. The project highlights the precision and craft possible with industrially produced mass timber. [Extracted from the article]

Circular construction is an alternative approach to traditional building practices that aims to reduce waste and address the climate crisis. It involves reusing and recycling building materials, as well as implementing design strategies for longevity and ease of disassembly. Arup, a global engineering firm, has developed a Circular Building Toolkit to guide designers in reducing the use of virgin and nonrenewable products. London has implemented mandatory circular-construction guidelines, and projects like the retrofit of One Triton Square have successfully demonstrated the benefits of circular construction. Other organizations, such as GXN and ETH Zurich's Circular for Architecture lab, are also exploring circular construction and developing innovative solutions. Legislation and policy decisions may be necessary to further develop the marketplace for circular construction. Ultimately, circular construction has the potential to significantly reduce carbon emissions and contribute to a more sustainable built environment. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the construction of a mixed-use infill building in Buffalo's Allentown neighborhood. The building, designed by Adam Sokol Architecture Practice, was made possible by the city's revised zoning policies and the demolition of a dilapidated historic building. The project includes 10 rental units, a retail space, and features energy-efficient elements such as heat pumps and solar water heaters. The design incorporates the historic facade and utilizes materials that match the original building. The article highlights the building's sustainable aspects and its contribution to the revitalization of Buffalo. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the resurgence of load-bearing masonry as a sustainable alternative to steel and concrete in construction. Stone, which has historically been used primarily for cladding, is being reimagined as a structural material through the use of contemporary construction techniques. Architects and designers are exploring the potential of stone in various projects, including market halls, cafeterias, and data centers. While load-bearing masonry still faces challenges in terms of industry standards and familiarity among contractors, there is growing demand and potential for its widespread adoption in the future. [Extracted from the article]

The National Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm, Sweden has opened a new dome theater called Wisdome as part of a joint initiative by five Swedish science museums. The Wisdome is intended to inspire young Swedes to pursue science by showcasing immersive 3D visuals and films explaining scientific processes. The architectural design of the Wisdome incorporates a new events hall and was inspired by historical precedents, particularly the Multihalle in Mannheim, Germany. The structure is made of cross-laminated timber and laminated-veneer lumber, and its construction method involved unique digitally milled pieces and prestressed columns. The events hall is a warm and welcoming space that includes restrooms and a bar, and it serves as an engaging exhibit in its own right. The architects hope that the Wisdome will start a conversation and inspire others to take an inventive approach to architecture. [Extracted from the article]

The double-height atrium, which contained a large portion of the library's collection and later evolved into a study space, is topped by a waffle slab ceiling. BUILDING TYPE STUDY 1,058 COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES FOR MUCH of its first 100 years, the University of Western Ontario, in London, was a relatively small outpost of Canada's public university system. The building's almost entirely poured-in-place concrete structure has stairs and mechanical shafts housed within oblong towers at the exterior corners and post-tensioned floor slabs supported by precast single tees. [Extracted from the article]

Naturally, Singapore's tropical heat and humidity required consideration, yet Ito was able limit the building's energy consumption with a variety of passive strategies. The 437,000-square-foot edifice occupies a key location adjacent to the school's first building, the Chinese Heritage Center fronting the 22-acre Yunnan Garden - both built in 1955 when NTU's predecessor, Nanyang University, opened. BUILDING TYPE STUDY 1,058 COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES DEFINED BY a gigantic timber frame, the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Business School embodies the elegance of Toyo Ito's architecture as well as the knowhow of a cutting-edge engineering school. [Extracted from the article]

BUILDING TYPE STUDY 1,054 HEALTH CARE COLLEGE CAMPUSES are reckoning with a mental-health crisis. According to an annual survey by the Healthy Minds Network, which examines collected data regarding mental health, service utilization, and related issues among undergraduate and graduate students from 373 campuses nationwide, more than 60 percent of students met criteria for one or more mental-health problems in 2020-21, nearly 50 percent more than 2013. According to the architects, students cite the university's rural setting as a reason for attending the school, so designLAB sought to utilize wood throughout their scheme, even in the structure. [Extracted from the article]

Most recently, students have been analyzing the sustainability strategies of the new Science and Environmental Center (SEC), completed in 2021 by the San Francisco firm Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects (LMSA). Joining forces since 2004 - on works including a library, classroom structure, revised master plan, and student center/cafeteria - Nueva and LMSA have set increasingly ambitious goals for energy performance and carbon reduction. BUILDING TYPE STUDY 1,049 K-12 SCHOOLS AT NUEVA SCHOOL'S pre-K through 8th-grade campus, in Hillsborough, California, even the buildings are fodder for learning. [Extracted from the article]

WOOD IS an ages-old construction material - but it is one that is receiving renewed attention, especially with the rise of mass timber. One tool that can help determine if a wood product originated from such a forest is certification. [Extracted from the article]

Ray and Finn visited Desert Palisades and eventually began work on the first house there, which the developers built on spec as a model home, setting a high standard for future designs. DEPARTMENTS IN THE mid-20th century, the mountainringed desert landscape of Palm Springs became a mecca for Modernist design, many of those commissions fueled by well-to-do and celebrity clients. The project was a collaborative effort between Ray and his son Finn Kappe, a Santa Monica-based architect. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the innovative construction techniques used to install an 18-million-pound timber roof at Portland International Airport's Terminal Core (TCORE). The project, part of the $2 billion PDX Next program, aims to double the size of the main terminal and create a modern layout for improved operations and passenger experience. Notable technologies used include drones, self-propelled modular transporters, and a curtain wall that hangs off the roof. The design incorporates locally sourced timber to represent the Pacific Northwest's residents, history, and geography. The new terminal area will also feature art exhibits and concessions that evoke Portland's streetscapes. [Extracted from the article]

DEPARTMENTS DESIGNED BY the France-based Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh, this year's Serpentine Pavilion is a deceptively simple structure made of glulam beams and timber posts, providing Kensington Gardens, one of London's grand central parks, with an ornate wood tent. Now in its third decade, the annual Serpentine Pavilion program is, as Ghotmeh puts it, about creating "a temporary, smart pavilion that has an intense life for a few months." Built on the lawn in front of a Neoclassical building that was originally a tearoom and is now the southern building of the Serpentine Gallery, each pavilion "reflects on the zeitgeist", says Ghotmeh. [Extracted from the article]

To announce entry points in a subtle yet legibleway, the design team installed weathering steel canopies at four differentbays along the exterior wall. At the building's front, the architects transformed an asphaltparking lot into a landscaped area with tables and benches, extendingthe gathering spaces to the outdoors. Thedurability of the exposed concrete shear walls andweathering steel canopies nod to the building's originalrole in arms manufacturing. [Extracted from the article]

Structurally hybrid, H1's first five levels (including two basement floors) are poured-in-place concrete, as is the central elevator tower; around this core rises a timber/concrete structure comprising columns, beams, and facades in Swiss beech, with prefabricated concrete floors. Winners of a 2019 design competition, Boltshauser proposed timber both for its low-carbon credentials and its speed of construction - approximately six months faster than an all-concrete tower, the architect estimates. At the Zwhatt development in Regensdorf, north of Zürich, Boltshauser Architekten is building a 24-story mass-timber apartment block due for completion in 2024. [Extracted from the article]

This is the first project in the U.S., and the first built with timber, for Pritzker Prize - winning firm Grafton Architects, which is working with local firm modus studio. Site work has commenced on the Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation at the University of Arkansas. As part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, it will be a space for fabrication, research, and development, constructed significantly of timber and wood sourced in Arkansas, the eighth-largest timber producer in the U.S. It will be home to the school's ongoing design-build and graduate programs and collaborative efforts with partners in the state's forest industries. [Extracted from the article]

Omaha-based HDR has garnered attention for its typology-spanning mass-timber projects, yet all these buildings, completed and in progress, are located outside the Cornhusker State (with most coming from the firm's busy British Columbia offices). "It's an interesting time line of buildings", says HDR design director Tom Trenolone, of the college's eclectic assemblage of structures - which includes two main halls, completed in 1892 and 1912, a connective atrium known as the Link that debuted in 1987, and soon this mass-timber addition. HDR is now, however, using engineered wood in its own backyard for a major addition at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's College of Architecture (plus one other mass-timber project elsewhere in the state). [Extracted from the article]

BOOKS Touch Wood: Material, Architecture, Future, by Carla Ferrer, Thomas Hildebrand, and Celina Martinez-Cañavate. Beginning with a host of Swiss examples from the 1980s and 1990s, this section highlights Peter Zumthor, Marcel Meili, and Herzog & de Meuron, among others, with a focus on the artful tectonic virtuosity they reintroduced to wood architecture. [Extracted from the article]

On a recent trip to Oregon, I took a helicopter tour of a working forest owned by Sierra Pacific Industries, one of the largest forest-products companies in the country, managing over 300,000 acres of timber in that state alone. Yet environmental advocates such as the Natural Resources Defense Council have argued that SFI, which certifies more than 63 million acres of forest in the U.S., is too industry-led to truly ensure sustainable forest practices. "If architects are going to make these significant sustainability claims, they need to know where the product comes from", says architect Michael Green, a vocal advocate for timber construction, whose eponymous Vancouver-based firm has millions of square feet of mass-timber projects under way. [Extracted from the article]

That's the challenge driving the work of Max Worrell, 45, and Jejon Yeung, 40, who met while earning their master's degrees at Yale and set up their own practice in 2014. After the financial meltdown of 2008, both firms downsized and gave their remaining staff more responsibility, which proved helpful to Worrell and Yeung, who kept their jobs. [Extracted from the article]

The amount of work that went into what is both a coffeetable book and a construction manual is staggering, and, while architects on the whole aren't doing enough to help mitigate climate change, Lewis, Tsurumaki, and Lewis are trying, however they can, to empower others and make a difference. WITH THEIR eye-opening Manual of Section (2016), Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki, and David Lewis of LTL Architects sliced through Rem Koolhaas's Casa da Musica, Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum, and Louis Kahn's Exeter Library, among other buildings, to illustrate how architectural spaces interlock in three dimensions. BOOKS Manual of Biogenic House Sections, by Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki, and David Lewis. [Extracted from the article]

Upcoming Exhibitions American Framing Chicago May 6-July 16, 2022 Wrightwood 659, a 1920s building transformed by architect Tadao Ando into a new exhibition space in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, presents a reinstallation of the U.S. pavilion for the 2021 International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Currently on view is an exhibition by artists Ben Langlands and Niki Bell consisting of 11 artworks that explore the role of architecture and design in imagining utopian futures. The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is displaying a collection of the avant-garde British architect's futuristic drawings; known as a "paper architect", his importance lies primarily in his shaping of architecture as a theoretical field. [Extracted from the article]

"It was very scary, to say the least", says Kyle Heckaman, project superintendent for Walsh Construction Co/OR (WCC), the general contractor for the 58,000-sq-ft PAE building. Successful Timber Installation Sloop attributes the successful timber installation to detailed work up front on the shop drawings. For the contractor who installed the mass timber frame of the supersustainable PAE Living Building in Portland, the devastating 2020 wildfires in Oregon truly hit home. Sloop credits the expertise of Carpentry Plus as key to the success of the timber installation. [Extracted from the article]

Since 1987, Cascade has provided a full range of functional Fabricoil© woven wire mesh fabric systems to domestic and international markets. Bison Innovative Products Bison Rooftop Deck Systems Bison Pedestals are manufactured in Denver, Colo., with 20% post-industrial recycled materials and have patented features that improve performance and stability. These versatile, adjustable pedestal deck systems create level rooftop decks over sloped surfaces, support a variety of different surface materials, and can be installed over any structural surface. www.bisonip.com Cascade Architectural Fabricoil© Coiled Wire Fabric Systems Cascade Architectural is committed to serving the product and service needs of our architectural customers. [Extracted from the article]

But those in one of a trio of buildings at the Swatch and Omega Headquarters, designed by the firm of Pritzker Prize laureate Shigeru Ban in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland, also feature views, elegant exposed-timber elements, and daylighting - architectural highlights seldom lavished on such utilitarian spaces. The architect kept the main glass facade - the north side, which faces a plaza and his new Swatch headquarters - as open and unobscured as possible. Exposed timber is featured throughout Ban's buildings at the complex, including the Swatch headquarters and a factory for Omega. [Extracted from the article]

The article informs that newest model International Building Code was adopted by the Chicago City Council. , which includes guidelines for taller timber buildings, and mentions a developer named Sterling Bay proposed nine-story apartment complex is regarded as the city's leading development.

he article discusses the use of mass timber, a structural load-bearing element made from solid lumber glued to form columns, beams, and large format panels, and adhesives in construction process to eradicate environmental pollution in construction. It mentions impact of green and sustainable construction on the environmental health. It also mentions benefits of mass timber.

The article evaluates the architectural design of Ascent in Milwaukee, Wisconsin designed by the firm Thornton Tomasetti.

The article reports on a study conducted by the team of the University of Oregon's Energy Studies in Buildings Laboratory, KPFF Engineering and Solarc Architects to investigate if the way a buildings structural beam system is laid out can be manipulated to allow more natural daylight to enter a room higher in the wall. The team has developed the Perimeter Beam Reduction for Daylight strategy.