TALL TIMBER: Height & Hybrids

The Skyscraper Museum's lecture series "Mass Timber Semester" brought together key voices in the Mass Timber movement to reflect on its short history, current condition, and promising future, with an IN-PERSON program at Thornton Tomasetti's lower Manhattan office at 120 Broadway.

How do we increase and optimize the uses of Mass Timber in the building industry? One approach is taller buildings, another is many, many mid-rise structures. Optimizing the amount of wood incorporated in new buildings – while following the best practices of managed forestry and whole-life-cycle analysis – reduces the impact of the high “carbon cost” of the embodied carbon in the energy-intensive standard building materials, steel and concrete, in new construction.

Yet concrete and steel have their own virtues in high-rise construction. A panel of experts will cap our lecture series The Short History and Promising Future of Tall Mass Timber Buildings with a discussion of Height & Hybrids. Our speakers include structural engineers and Mass Timber specialists Benton Johnson of SOM, Alejandro Fernandez of Thornton Tomasetti​, and Eric Karsh of EQUILIBRIUM who will be engaged in discussion with Daniel Safarik, Director of Research at the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat ​and co-author of the recent CTBUH Technical Guides​ on Tall Timber.

The Museum thanks Thornton Tomasetti for the generous donation of their event space for this program.