Massachusetts’ tallest timber building will rise over the Boston skyline and feature a “monolithic mass timber design” after Boston University (BU) submitted plans for a new 12-storey, 186-foot (high), and 70,000-square-foot signature building—part of its celebration of 10 years of its Pardee School of Global Studies.
The new building – which is 21 feet taller than the nearby West End Library development – calls for a new building to rise at 250 Bay State Road on the site of a former parking lot, with the decision to use timber (instead of steel and concrete) as part of a BU-wide push to eliminate embodied carbon across its campus footprint.
Designed by New York-based Diller+Scofidio Renfro (DS+R), the project includes classrooms, offices, a student lounge and a penthouse-level event room and terrace. Wood Central understands that the new height is a tradeoff for a slimmer 6,100-square-foot footprint, maximising open space and minimising shadows over the Charles River parklands and “BU Beach.”
“The all-electric, fossil fuel-free design features a monolithic massing to minimize material use and energy loss,” according to Sean Gallagher, DS+R’s director of sustainable design. “We are thrilled to be part of Boston University’s effort to make urban environments healthier, more vibrant places to live.”
The new scheme is part of a growing number of mass timber low-rise, mid-rise, and high-rise projects across the Northeast (up 168% last year). Advances in fire resistance are creating a perfect environment for more and more buildings, like Havard’s David Rubenstein Treehouse now under construction, to consider cross-laminated timber.
Last year, Wood Central reported that mass timber construction systems could compete with concrete and steel on price, with a new study revealing that smart prefabrication and improved supply chains hold the key to building towers (like BU’s scheme) that are 12-18 storeys in height.
Produced by PCL Construction, one of North America’s largest construction contractors, DCI Engineers, the engineers behind the world’s first post-and-plate mass timber high-rise, and design firm Weber Thompson, it confirms that ‘intermediate high-rise’ is the sweet spot for timber-based construction systems, “often underbuilt in urban areas due to an unfortunate intersection of construction code requirements.”
“When factoring in cost savings from the reduced schedules associated with using prefabricated mass timber, combined with an improved material supply chain, an 18-storey residential building built using a hybrid of mass timber and concrete could cost $74.45 per square foot…(compared) to $71.09 per square foot for concrete.”
“While slightly more expensive, it’s a competitive price that may influence developers to think twice about the materials, especially when deciding to differentiate their product in a competitive leasing market.”
Amongst other findings, it also found that hybrid timber buildings could store up to 3,350 metric tones of CO2 across its useable life, “equivalent to the carbon sequestered by 4,000 acres of US forest in one year, or eliminating 745 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles from the road.”
- A full copy of the “Hyrid Tall Timber: Mass Timber Residential High-Rise Study” can be downloaded here from the PCL Construction website.
