Rising Expectations

At Constructive Form, we look forward to the opportunity to learn more about new materials and methods that contribute to high quality sustainable design, and healthy buildings for our clients to inhabit.

This spring brought us two such opportunities, in the form of the Passive House Northwest Spring Conference in Olympia and the International Mass Timber Conference in Portland.

Passive House Northwest 2017 Spring Conference

For those who are less familiar with it, Passive House (PH or Passivhaus in Germany) is both a concept and a modeled performance system for construction, while the better-known LEED certification system has more of a points-based approach.

As proponents and practitioners of sustainable design, Passive House Northwest’s Spring Conference gave us the opportunity to network with like-minded design professionals, as well as continuing to develop our knowledgebase.

International Mass Timber Conference

At Constructive Form, we are exploring the use of CLT for a few multi –story projects on a[GM1] compact urban infill sites. CLT is attractive for its sustainable properties and visual attributes[GM2] , and using it on these particular projects brings some additional advantages: it can cut down on-site construction time significantly, and because the total construction time is cut, construction labor costs can be lower.

The International Mass Timber Conference showcased the innovation, technology, and challenges of designing and building using cross-laminated timber (CLT), nail laminated timber, and glue laminated timber. Although the CLT products have been circulating in the market for years now, especially in Europe, using them as primary construction materials appears to have reached a critical threshold in North America, and in particular, the Pacific Northwest.

Watch this space for more news on how we integrate mass timber and other innovative, sustainable materials in our projects.