Creating Flexibility from Rigidity: A New Way of Looking at the Mass Timber Panel

Abstract

Using mass timber panels in the built environment in any capacity requires offsite prefabrication and frequently involves preassembly in a factory. On site construction and assembly is then much faster, cleaner, quieter, and less labor intensive. Yet this prefabrication can frequently remove 20% to 40% of the overall panel, which leaves a vast quantity of waste material. While treating that material purely as waste would negate much of the carbon sequestration benefit from using mass timber in the first place, prohibiting its creation would prohibit the widespread adoption of the material. This paper discusses why that waste exists to begin with and investigates the possible avenues for using that material. The aim of this thesis is to look at mass timber panels from a different perspective—one that treats them as a flexible product ripe for creativity. Innovative solutions for using small format mass timber are demonstrated with a computational design script in a case study that creates parametric relationships between envelope features and other project components. Future work on both waste reduction and changing the narrative around using mass timber panels is discussed.