In this episode, we'll dive into the groundbreaking use of mass timber for a significant new project at Morningside University. David & Corey will demystify what mass timber is, explaining how these layered, manufactured wood products offer exceptional strength and stability as a sustainable alternative to traditional concrete and steel. We'll uncover the "why" behind Morningside's decision to embrace this material, discussing how its natural beauty and low-carbon footprint align with creating inspiring, forward-thinking educational environments. We will illuminate how this revolutionary material is not just constructing buildings, but "pioneering better places for us to live and work" and shaping the future of higher education spaces.
(Skyler): Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Laying the Foundation podcast. My name is Skyler, I'm your host, and today we're going to be talking about mass timber, which is sort of this, I don't know how you describe it, David, sort of this new or kind of emerging or re-emerging?
(David Brockshus): Mass timber is not necessarily a new technology, but it's experiencing a renaissance quite early, in the architecture and construction industry.
(Skyler): Okay, so re-emerging material, and as you've already heard, joining me today will be David Brockshus, who… It’s been a little while since we've had you on the podcast, but you've definitely been on before to talk about, I think it was one of the first episodes, in fact, talking about schools and making them safe, but not making them prisons.
(David Brockshus): Correct. And one about KTIV for how to design a radio station. And that was a fun one because we had people who used to do radio on it.
(Skyler): Yeah, absolutely. And to top it off, we actually got to be in the studio. So we got to see it from there. And then joining me as well today, we have a very special guest. We have Corey Erickson from Raker Rhodes, one of the engineers who's working with David on the project that we're going to talk about today, and obviously has some experience with mass timber and everything adjacent to it. Welcome to the show.
(Corey Erickson): Yeah, happy to be here.
(Skyler): Awesome, awesome. Well, I’m excited to have you. So again, mass timber is getting a resurgence in popularity, but not a new material. So, David, if you can talk to us a little bit about what it even is? What does mass timber mean when we're thinking about it? What is it that we should be kind of visualizing?
(David Brockshus): The visualization clues are really in its name, mass timber. So everybody's familiar with standard, we'll say, quote unquote, standard wood construction. This smaller, nominal, dimensional pieces of wood. A 2 x 4, 2 x 6. This is the stuff that's bigger than that, and it's larger masses of that. So you're using a larger engineered piece of wood in this scenario to increase the spacing of columns, and you're essentially faking a structural system that's similar to what a steel system would be, but it's still made out of very large pieces of wood in lieu of smaller lumber pieces or steel pieces. So you get the aesthetics of the wood as well from that. So this is a project that we're working on for a client that is actually kind of a hybrid system. So we have some feature areas where we are trying to highlight the mass timber construction. And just to save cost, we're doing steel in other areas and then wrapping that with the same species of wood so it can all be stained out to match the same. If people are familiar with CMBA's office in Sioux City, we have, we'll say an old mass timber office where all of the members are actually just whole trees. They've not been manufactured. Most of what we're using for this project will be glue-lams for the primary structural members. So all the beams and joists if you will, that support the floor. And then the floor itself is actually a composite of a DLT. Correct?
(Corey Erickson): CLT for this project. So CLT would be cross-laminated timber, which is manufactured by gluing and pressing together multiple plies of wood. in our case, five plies for the floor.
(Skyler): Oh, okay.
(Corey Erickson): And then each ply is laid perpendicular to each other, which gives it a two-way strength.
(Skyler): Okay, very cool, very cool. Increases the build and the capability of it. Very awesome. You kind of mentioned this before, a little bit, David. Why would somebody choose mass timber? You said it gives you that appeal, for the wood side, but has a little bit more strength and that thickness.
(David Brockshus): It allows us to capitalize on the beauty of the wood as a natural material. Biophilia is a big design topic as well, right now. The more natural materials that you have inside an educational project, the better the educational outcomes. And that's true all the way from kindergarten all the way up in this instance, for a post-secondary client. A secondary use for some of the mass timber is appealing on the green side. The typical wood construction is not necessarily seen as a long-term construction scenario. Even though most people's homes in our area are made of wood, they still have a fairly definite lifetime to them. Because of the size of these members and the durability of them, they have a much longer lifespan than, say, a standard 2x4 or 2x6 building. So, if you think of the building in terms of embodied carbon, not having to tear down and rebuild the building, it has a longer and more sustainable lifespan.
(Skyler): Yeah, that makes sense. You've got larger chunks of wood, or as you mentioned, Corey, press together chunks of wood to have a more enduring capability for the building. Awesome. Very cool. Again, David, you always touch on the things just before I'm able to ask. So with Morningside University, which are the ones that we're doing this project for. You mentioned the biophilia and how beneficial that can be to the student journey and the learning process, having those natural features. We've talked about that many times on the podcast. Is there a particular reason outside of that as to why Morningside wanted to take this direction? Something else you talked about was the steel, or just other traditional things. I know you mentioned that with this mass timber, it's got a little bit of a better lifespan. Is there anything else that they leaned into, or maybe just even the stylistic nature of it?
(David Brockshus): Their primary reason for wanting to pursue this was for the green advocacy of it. We don't necessarily have any targeted, sustainable goals, such as a lead building or a net-zero goal, but all the things that they work towards on campus they're working towards a net-zero nature. We just had a meeting with them this last week, going through finished materials and a lot of the materials, and they were really thrilled to hear about interior finishes. Shelby's done a really nice job of selecting sustainable materials. Almost all the carpets now have at least some sustainable metric towards them that you would specify. They're really trying to focus on that as a key business thing that their school is focusing on, as well as just a sense of pride that they're taking to the campus there. The bigger benefit they're getting from this, as well, is that they get the nice aesthetics of the wood. That's kind of an extra feather in their cap, if you will. It gives it a little bit more of a prestige appearance inside the building if you have that wood, and you naturally bring in that biophilic material as well.
(Skyler): Absolutely. Okay, on the flip side, because I know we had to postpone this episode a couple of times, are there challenges that are usually associated with using mass timber as opposed to some of the other, options that we had mentioned before, or maybe just within the process of the project at hand, were there any challenges when it came to the mass timber aspect that were like, oh, man, that was a little bit frustrating, but obviously we've gotten past that.
(Corey Erickson): I'll hop in on this one. So I guess for a true mass timber building, it works best with a regular grid of columns closely spaced together. We're talking like 20, 25ft in our case, since we're utilizing more of a hybrid construction. We're able to stretch that out a little bit. But having to rely more on steel frames in places to get those longer spans. And, supporting heavier special loads such as operable partitions and that sort of thing. So you're somewhat limited if you're looking for the true mass timber in your floor plan. But you have strategies such as Sarcase to work around that. And, other challenges would be just the detailing. It's kind of a specialized product. So in our case, we're engaging with the mass timber supplier early on. To help point us in the right direction as far as the detailing of the product. And making sure we are playing nicely with all the different materials, so to speak.
(Skyler): Okay, that makes sense.
(David Brockshus): They had recommended floor assemblies and roof assemblies as well. Correct. Just in terms of the thickness of the composite. We'll say slabs. So Corey had reached out to them and worked through some of the feasibility scenarios. And then I think even, as this is a design-build project with W.A. Klinger, the contractor, has been using them for a pricing resource as well. Which lets us know where we land cost-wise. As I mentioned before, this is a reemerging product that's gaining kind of popularity in the US, not as quickly in our market region per se. But Iowa isn't necessarily known as a state filled with forests.
(Skyler): Sure, lots of fields, but maybe not forests.
(David Brockshus): Correct. It's more popular in the Pacific Northwest. And then in the Atlantic Southeast. Are the two, we'll say, hotbed areas for this right now? But that's also where the US has a lot more of its forest industry in those locations.
(Skyler): That makes sense. Yep. A lot more of those. Well, timber, as we think of it, kind of, areas. Yeah, absolutely.
(David Brockshus): Another thing that we've… not struggled with, but hurdles that we ran into are. I mean, we're most commonly used to working with steel members. We had set some of our initial floor-to-floor elevations based on, we'll say was enough space to provide the structural support that we needed. And then below that, the room for HVAC duct pathways. And then having our ceilings set. What we'd see is a comfortable height for the building. Because of the wood members that we do have. That supports loads in some areas of the building. Those are dramatically deeper than a steel member. That would be, I would say, used in lieu of that, in replacement of that, we did have to stop at one point and stretch the building vertically. It was it 16 inches or 2 feet taller. But just to make up for the smaller space that we had initially planned on. At that point in time, we didn't have enough space to make it work without our ceilings coming way, way down.
(Skyler): Interesting. Okay.
(David Brockshus): It's just a little different learning curve that we had as a design team on that side.
(Skyler): Absolutely, yeah. Were there any other design challenges that came with using this mass timber as opposed to one of the other materials?
(David Brockshus): We're still heavy in the design phase, or just produced the design development set earlier this week. So I think we still have yet to dive really deep into the weeds of some of the details. Some of the floor assemblies have an acoustic material between them. So one thing we're looking at is trying to beef up the acoustics of our walls that separate between. Because we're trying to expose the floor in certain areas, we're being more cautious as to what we put in the floor layer for an acoustic material as well. To separate spaces between floors, as well as the walls between. Just because we have fewer acoustic materials in each room. So there are just different things we have to think about because of using this as a construction material in the building. And then even on the aesthetics and appearance side, one thing we've been fairly cautious with, as well as our MEP pathways through the building, we're trying to not cross our nice, exposed wood ceiling in locations that we can avoid it. Obviously, we've got to have a natural gas water supply. We're not going to duke double up on everything there because it's just not efficient. But we're being very intentional with where we cross that or where we attach to the wood just to celebrate the wood and not have it in the building and then cover it with stuff or have conduit or these things kind of fastened all over it. All over the place.
(Skyler): Right. Because then we lose the purpose of having that natural aesthetic. And obviously the biophilic thing doesn't really work if we're covering everything up and hiding it behind all sorts of other things.
(David Brockshus): So I think even just being in this office space is a big help because we have a really nice, we have a nice example, like literally above our heads, for how to route things around in our office. You really can't tell where a lot of those pathways are. They did a nice job of hiding; condo it runs and just select areas of the building. But that's something we're going to continue working through with the mechanical and electrical engineers on the project.
(Skyler): Yeah, I didn't even think about that. Yeah, you've literally got examples all around you, so that's kind of convenient. Yeah, absolutely. So, out of curiosity, because I probably should have asked this closer to the beginning, but what is this space going to be used for?
(David Brockshus): It will be Morningside's new college of business.
(Skyler): Oh, okay. Okay.
(David Brockshus): So they're sharing a building right now with just another department. So they'll be moving into this new building. They'll be having a student incubator.
(Skyler): Oh, okay.
(David Brockshus): On the main level of this building. So they've had a number of businesses in Sioux City, or we'll say the Siouxland metro area, that have been started by Morningside graduates, and they've taken to celebrating that fact. I know there are a number of other universities in Iowa. They're kind of doing the same thing and using some of these creative spaces for students to start businesses, still while they're in college, and then expand them after graduating.
(Skyler): Okay.
(David Brockshus): But there's going to be a number of classrooms on the main level, a lecture hall or two lecture halls in the upper level as well as another classroom, some just tertiary-like study spaces in between, and then faculty offices on the upper level to give all the faculty offices in one singular spot. They're kind of broken up on campus now, but they'll have a new home there. And then Morningside gets the benefit of being able to shuffle other programs back into that space in the existing building that they're sharing.
(Skyler): Perfect. Okay, sounds good. And this is a whole new, obviously a whole new building, to move a lot of this stuff over and have a space specifically for that business major and the staff and the students that'll need to be there. So. Fantastic. Wow. Brand new, same department that existed, but brand-new space for them, which will be incredibly exciting. So, outside of just Morningside University, have we been using mass timber on other projects? Again, you mentioned that this is especially in our area. It hasn't taken off as much as it has in some other areas. And we do a lot of stuff within the Midwest region within our firm. But have we dealt with any other projects on our lineup? Corey, anything that you've worked on? That uses this, mass timber.
(Corey Erickson): Raker Rhodes has done one other mass timber project, and that's an office building in Des Moines. That's a 111 East Grand project. And that one's a, ah, true mass timber where we've got the glulam columns and beams. And there was a nail-laminated timber instead of the CLT. That one is a little different in that they are spanning from column to column without any secondary glulam beams. So it's a much more open floor plate if you will.
(Skyler): Gotcha. Okay. Very cool, very cool. I got an open kind of plan and everything like that. And again, using that sort of biophilic design, it works for office spaces as well. Enhances focus, increases those positive, natural elements, and things along those lines.
(David Brockshus): Otherwise, in CMBA's catalog, we haven't done a true full mass timber building. We've done other hybrid scenarios. We have some schools. The Grand Island office has, I believe, Starr Elementary has some glulam timbers in that just to bring some more soft aesthetic materials into their library and commons, and that elementary school. The nature center project that I worked on with other members of Raka Rhodes was a super-duper hybrid where we did a SIPs building with CMU and other spots, ICF retaining walls. And then we had a lot of structural members in lieu of using steel in certain areas. We did a glulam structure that was exposed. That gave it the nature center lodge feel that they were looking for at the Sioux County Nature Center. Otherwise, we haven't had like a primary structural system. It's been more of an aesthetic one used in limited areas. But it hasn't been as much of a feature or highlighted like this or used as pervasively. It's always been in certain select areas. We use it as a structural system, but not as widely as this project does.
(Skyler): Yeah, no, that's fantastic. So this is definitely kind of a big milestone project as far as that goes. both for what we do as well as just in our area. I'm sure to some extent, you don't see it a lot.
(David Brockshus): Yeah, Sioux City has a ton of mass timber buildings. Obviously, we've talked about the building that we're sitting in. Oh yeah, the Hard Rock Casino has mass timber as well. Council Oak Supply has mass timber. One of the buildings that State Steel owns is mass timber. There are a lot of buildings that are, we'll say, historic in the downtown area, but none of them are new. So it's been over 100 years since people have really kind of considered this as a kind of construction material.
(Skyler): Absolutely. And I mean, we've talked a few times within some of our podcast episodes. Sort of trends within design and things along those lines. So it's definitely exciting to see an older trend that's been used. Obviously, we stepped away from it, and now it's kind of getting this re-emergence. It's really cool to see that being used in new buildings, and I guess it kind of gives a little bit of that older feel because of it. We see the buildings that had it previously when it was popular, and so we kind of have that mental association of, oh, this kind of has a vintage tone to it or something along those lines. It'll be exciting to see a new building taking on this style and how they kind of reinvent it. You might say, That'll be interesting. Is there anything that I'm missing that I haven't covered yet, that you guys wanted to make sure to note about either this project or just mass timber as a material in general?
(David Brockshus): It's been an exciting new kind of thing to learn. Yes. It's not necessarily like; it's not anything that's new. We're still using a lot of our old concepts. Our structural layout that we have is much more revolutionary than what you do with steel. It's just made of wood now, so it's not anything that's we'll say too new or too surprising. It's just a different learning curve. There's just some different structural nuance that goes on with this. I mean obviously we're still working through a lot of the, we'll say the finishing details as we're going through everything. I mean, we can definitely do like a follow-up or addendum to this podcast, just to talk through a lot more than nuts and bowls like Corey and I have. A lot of the big picture stuff has been, it's been covered. But I'm very certain there are a lot of fine details that will be passing back and forth across our desks here as we wrap up the project.
(Skyler): Finish up all that. Yeah, absolutely. That'll be exciting to see and again revisit because we'll be able to actually look at the project. We'll get to see it when it's finished, and we'll get to experience how the mass timber has come to fruition. With that being said, out of curiosity, and I know I've asked questions like this in the past, there is no crystal ball. But to the best of your abilities, if you were to have a crystal ball, do you foresee maybe more mass timber being used in projects in our region? Because again, that's kind of like the call, it's the hang-up. Right? Our limitation within our access to certain resources might keep people from doing it. But do you see this trend pushing through that, and maybe seeing a bit more of that within projects?
(Corey Erickson): If I had to guess, I would say that, for at least the short term future, it's probably going to be the big featured projects like this Morningside that'll be considered on as it gains more popularity in the bigger markets, and contractors and developers experience with it and start to see some of the benefits and it might start to work its way inward. just like any other trend. It seems like the Midwest is a little bit behind. Yeah, I think it'll continue to grow in popularity, but I guess we'll have to see.
(Skyler): Yeah, absolutely, we'll have to see. Well, again, it's exciting to see this real emergence and see where that goes. And I think that's a good point. We don't know for sure, but it's exciting to get to use it now on a project that we have and see where it goes from here. Awesome. Well, fantastic. Thank you both for taking the time out of your day to sit down with me to talk about both the project over at Morningside that we're working on and how we're using mass timber to benefit that project. because it's not just about structure, it's also about the aesthetic, and it's also about how all of that comes together to create something special and unique, that's beneficial for the client and those that are going to be using that space. So, David, thank you for being on the show, and Corey, also for joining us as a special guest on the show as well.
(David Brockshus): Thank you.
(Skyler): We'll see you guys next time.
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