A standard has finally been approved for CLT (Cross-Laminated Timber), a new structural wood product that can be used either as a wall or as a slab. From the APA press release: ANSI/APA PRG 320-2011 Standard for Performance-Rated Cross-Laminated Timber, a new standard for cross-laminated timber (CLT), was approved for publication last month by by [...]

Now that the holidays are almost here… I wish you all a joyful and peaceful time. Wherever you are and whatever you celebrate, enjoy time with your family, rest, relax, take some time off and recharge. All the best for the new year. See you in 2012!

Great promotional video on why using wood is indeed good for the environment: (via Go Wood)

If you are using SketchUp, then it’s time for you to soon browse over to Google’s website and download the latest version (v.8 M2). Although this release is not a new version but rather a maintenance release (hence the “M2″), there are a few new features and a bunch of bugfixes. So what’s new and [...]

Admittedly this is a bit of a strange question to ask. However, when you are considering using wood products in your buildings, this question might come up in discussions – especially when clients think about resource depletion issues. As it turns out, the entire amount of wood required for a 50,000 s.f. hotel in the [...]

A good friend of ours, Jim Taggart from Vancouver, BC, just completed a beautiful new book on wood architecture with the visionary title ”Towards a Culture of Wood Architecture”. It features various modern examples of enlightening architecture in wood but also presents traditional buildings that illustrate the foundations of this culture. All are elaborately illustrating a recent trend [...]

Only 10 days left for early registration! Also check out our updated speaker list and the details on AIA/PDH credits. Join us this September for the 2011 Symposium on Wood Engineering, Architecture and Construction at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Presentations will cover passivehouse technology, environmental benefits of using wood and new, innovative wood building [...]

When I went to the 2011 Google Geo User Summit United States in Mountain View, CA this July, I had the chance to present two projects that I have worked on in the recent past here at the University of Massachusetts. “Building a 3D World” The first presentation was on our campus modeling project in [...]

We now have the symposium website and the registration up and running – feel free to browse it and make sure you tell all your colleagues about it. The 2011 Wood Structures Symposium will be an exciting venue with experts from the University of Innsbruck in Austria presenting on Passivehouse construction and Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) [...]

In my quest to make my content more audience-specific, I recently started cross-posting wood-related news, readings and updates to the @timberengineer Twitter account. Similar to what I have been posting already about wood to my @alexschreyer account, I will in the future be posting more wood-related content under the new account. So to make a [...]