Presenting at Mass Timber
BY SIDNEY FILIPPIS
The International Mass Timber Conference, held in Portland, OR, is the largest gathering of mass timber experts worldwide. While it may be the largest focused on mass timber, this seventh annual conference is still relatively new in the building industry. Our co-founders Lisa and Adam attended last year and returned enthusiastically with many lessons learned. We saw sending two new team members as an opportunity to grow our studio knowledge. My teammate Conor and I represented Synecdoche at the conference this year, and I had the chance to speak on a panel focused on how architects and engineers can work with different code officials to approve projects successfully.
I wanted to take full advantage of all the conference had to offer, so we hit the ground running on the opening evening, curiously exploring the main exhibit. With over a hundred displays set up, the wide range of areas covered varied from acoustic detailing to large-scale manufacturing to sustainable forestry practices. We physically tested assemblies, toured mock-ups, and made personal connections with other professionals in this space. What I found uniquely interesting about this conference, in contrast to others I have attended, was the open nature of each exhibit and, more importantly, the candid conversation among the panelists. The informational sessions targeted transparency, something the WoodWorks organization, a conference co-sponsor, focuses on. Designers, contractors, and developers want to see others using mass timber as a sustainable building material. The mass timber community understands that applying this new construction type in large-scale buildings comes with additional challenges: insuring the building during construction and post-occupancy, detailing fire-suppression requirements and fire penetration, finding contractors with experience erecting and scheduling this new material, financing, etc. Unlike the familiar storyline where the first person to figure out a new technology refrains from sharing their process, this conference capitalizes on the desire to help others jump over hurdles quicker and faster. The sustainability impact of mass timber is significant enough to encourage those who have completed or are actively working on mass timber projects to share what worked and what did not.
Overall the energy of the mass timber community was refreshing! Before the conference, I was excited and slightly nervous about representing Synecdoche and our work. This was the first panel I ever sat on, and I took this opportunity very seriously. I have been working in the architecture and construction industry for 10 years, and while the fact that our industry is male-dominated is not news to me, the conference did serve as a reminder. I was only one of very few women in the room. I am uniquely positioned to work with a majority-female team at Synecdoche, a woman-owned business. In fact, many of our clients, including the developers we are working with on the large mass timber project, are women. I was incredibly proud to represent my team, sharing our approach and knowledge we have gained in realizing our mass timber project. This was a great reminder for me that it is worth it to share what I know, seek out what I do not, and in doing so, you continue to grow along the way.
