Rebecca Maloney
Americas Press Office ,Boston
Arup will serve as a primary consultant on both winning projects for fire and life safety, structural, acoustics, and sustainability services.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Softwood Lumber Board, and Bi-National Softwood Lumber Council sponsored a national design competition on the Federal Register that sought to award a winning project or projects that were committed to designing and constructing a tall demonstration building that uses structural timber as a primary material.
On 17 September the two winners were formally announced at the High Line in New York City. The project winners are the 11-story 475 West 18th Street condominium project located in Manhattan and the 12-story Framework mixed-use project in the Pearl District of Portland, Oregon. The architectural firms are SHoP, and LEVER, respectively.
We will be serving as a primary consultant on both projects for fire and life safety, structural, acoustics, and sustainability services. With the prize competition funding in place, these projects are advancing into design, with ambitions to break ground as soon as fall 2016.
As timber buildings of this height and scale are not allowed under the governing building codes, code alternative solutions will be necessary to gain approvals. Project-specific testing is anticipated to validate the fire, structural, and acoustic design approaches. The competition prize winnings are designated to cover incremental costs associated with the design and construction of the new building archetype. Each project will be provided $1.5m in prize money from the competition sponsors.