oN5 is a four-storey office building located near the intersection of Ontario and E. 5th Avenue in Vancouver. Built on a narrow mid-block site with only a 7.54m (24.7ft) wide street frontage, the commercial project has an all-timber structure. Cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels form the floors, walls and roof, removing the need for beams. The prefabricated load-bearing CLT walls meet Passive House envelope performance standards. The CLT floor panels use an innovative adhesive system eliminating the need for beams. To view more informations visit the Naturally Wood website.

ON5 Building

Fast + Epp’s four-storey home office building serves as a ‘living laboratory’ with new ideas and technologies being tested both during construction and throughout the life of the building. Hybrid mass timber and steel were used as the structure’s fundamental building blocks to demonstrate material efficiency and sustainable construction.

Located on the ground floor and half of the second floor, Concept Lab is Fast + Epp’s R&D space focused on advancing structural design. The space includes a full shop to fabricate models, prototypes, and mock-ups, a 100,000lb loading frame for structural testing, and digital suites to develop design visualizations, software, and design tools.

Interview with Tobias Fast

Tobias Fast is an Associate at Fast + Epp and will be leading the site tour of their living laboratory, “Concept Lab: on October 12^th, 2022. This Tour is part of Building Transformations’ Industry Summit on Timber: Timber in the Digital Environment: Spotlight on DFMA.

We spoke with Tobias to get a preview of what’s to come in the world of timber fabrication:

Building Transformations (BT): Why do you think Timber is such an important topic today?

Tobias Fast (TF): Timber is the current darling of the AEC community as we consider more carefully the materials with which we build our buildings. Within all the fanfare it's important to paint an accurate picture of the materials strengths and weaknesses to better understand where it's best suited. We've done this for concrete and steel which have been used in large-scale buildings for decades, timber at this scale is new and so the time for this conversation is now.

BT: Can you speak to one of your proudest achievements that came from Fast + Epp's Concept Lab?

TF: Getting our first paid commission! This is a venture into the unknown for us as a company, and having clients see the value is very rewarding (and relieving).

BT: How do new digitalization tools transform the philosophy around design and fabrication within the Concept Lab?

TF: The Concept Lab is about exploring new concepts in construction and one of the biggest opportunities in the built environment is the use of digital tools to do better analysis, design, and fabrication. To this end the space features a 3D printer, a 6-axis robot, VR and computational design software to test out how these tools can be used to improve our industry. 

BT: What is one of the most exciting Timber projects in North America under construction? Why?

TF: 2105 Keith Drive (in partnership with Bentall GreenOak and Dialog Architecture) is currently in the ground in East Vancouver. This will be a gem of a building with mass timber gravity and lateral systems over 11 storeys. Flat soffit long-span floorplates, mass timber lateral system with resilient energy dissipating seismic dampers - very exciting!

BT: Digital tools have catalyzed the construction industry in countless ways; what do you think is next for Timber in the Digital environment?

TF: Automation of manual design tasks, artificial intelligence in the quality control process at lumber mills, robotic assembly lines in pre-fabricated housing... lots of fun to be had!

The Honourable Ravi Kahlon, Minister of Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation will give remarks on BC’s Mass Timber Action Plan which was launched in April this year. This plan lays out a pathway to invest and grow the mass timber sector and position BC as a world leader in this technology. Come join us to hear what the Government of British Columbia is working on.

Consistently hailed as “America's Best Airport,” Portland International Airport is increasing capacity by 65% to accommodate 35 million passengers annually. A series of transformative projects will consolidate 80 years of expansion and renovation under one wood roof and double the main terminal's footprint.

Upon entering the new terminal core, visitors will be invited to take a walk in the forest with a stunning 380,000-SQ-FT mass timber roof that celebrates the region’s history of forest product innovation. Critically, the expansion project will be constructed while maintaining standard airport operations and with minimal passenger disruption. But how does a project team achieve this - increased capacity, doubled footprint, and seismically resilient wooden roof - all while the airport remains fully operational and adheres to the highest safety considerations?

This presentation will answer how different technologies enabled both the design and construction of the largest public project in the history of the state. Using an iteratively developed digital twin, the team was able to design to maximize modularization and phasing opportunities. Presenters will provide examples at different scales of how digital tools helped to inform design development, guide decision making for the construction process - including logistics and fabrication - and manage the design around the critical realties of sequencing, from construction tolerances to existing airport operations.

SHL is an international architecture firm working at the leading edge of sustainability and technology. SHL is well known for its innovative mass timber projects such as Framehouse, UBC Gateway, Dordrecht House of the City (contemporary town-hall), Rocket & Tigerly (the world’s tallest timber tower in Switzerland) and Victory Silos in Toronto, which uses mass-timber as an adaptive transformation technology. These are testbeds of the latest technologies and practices to reduce the immense waste, carbon-load and environmental damage of new construction. Now, there is also an emerging political will to transform and adapt exciting buildings.

With political instability and environmental limits causing shocks in the commodity supply chain, the once reliable measures of construction cost are now changing daily. Suddenly, Adaptive Transformation and material conservation seem far more reasonable, and timber has a role to play. But we lack the education, techniques and financial instruments to handle this more sensible alternative with the same precision as with demolition and reconstruction. This talk explores what techniques, technologies and relationships are needed to allow Adaptive Transformation to compete with new-build, how the latest technologies might unlock the impasse and the opportunities opening up for mass timber solutions.

Where will the knowledge and skills come from to prepare the Canada’s construction industry for mass timber? How are the education institutions evolving to meet demands for digital design, fabrication and assembly expertise and what is happening at the leading edge of academic research?

This panel of leading educators and researchers will discuss what’s happening to prepare the workforce of tomorrow. They will showcase the latest innovations coming out of the research labs, where the gaps are and what still needs to get done if Canada is to maintain its leadership position in timber technology.

Digital manufacturing and assembly technologies are rapidly evolving. Socially engaging buildings that integrate these technologies are rare. Architectural technologists and manufacturing industry alike champion DfMA (Design for Manufacturing and Assembly) and vertically integrated project delivery to achieve UN sustainable development goals. In the meantime, users of buildings have other concerns.

Housing and other forms of socially important architectural and urban development problems will not be solved by vertically integrated project delivery alone. It could however be solved by democratizing good design - creating the interactive design-assist and decision support tools, creating spatial presets, and smart design modules derived from high-performance (spatial & ecological) global best practices that are being demonstrated by the bleeding edge architectural and engineering firms.

Put simply, good ‘Design’ - the D in DfMA - is critical. This presentation will illustrate the first-principle approach taken by Zaha Hadid Architects to address good design and its democratization borrowing along the way, technologies from other tech-enabled, cultural domains like video games, movies and music.

There is a revolution underway within the construction technology sector that is opening up unprecedented opportunities for architects, engineers and builders. The interface between traditional design and construction is being eroded and concepts of mass production and assembly are starting to shake up the way projects get delivered.

This panel discussion brings together entrepreneurs and technology providers to talk about the latest advances in technology to support Design for Manufacture and Assembly, construction efficiency and collaboration.  They will also talk about what it takes for owners, designers and builders to leverage these tools to best effect, the value created and the business benefits.

Naikoon is an award-winning, vertically integrated Construction Manager that specializes in digital project delivery for small, complex mass timber projects . Joe Geluch will present the tools, approaches and execution procedures used on Naikoon’s recent mass timber projects that have resulted in off site construction and extremely fast structural assembly and building enclosure. He will discuss the lessons learnt on two completed projects and highlight the approaches being brought to current projects.

The specialist fabricator is a new member of the construction team – and critical to the success of advanced timber projects. These companies bring a wealth of expertise and technological sophistication to projects of all sizes. With perspectives from prefabrication, to high-performance panelization and mass timber customization and assembly, this panel of expert fabricators will talk about their range of services, how they support timber projects, and how architects and engineers can best engage with them.

The combination of digital technology and mass timber is transforming the way we design and build structures. In his closing remarks, Tobias Fast will explore how new digital design tools and material innovations are uniting to create more sustainable buildings and communities. Speaking from experience on innovative high-profile mass timber projects like Limberlost Place at George Brown University, the Ohana Montage Health Facility in California and the award-winning Fast + Epp Home Office in Vancouver, the closing presentation will focus on the future of timber in the digital environment and the design approaches and new methodologies being used in mass timber building design.