Almost Two weeks ago I arranged a special tour for Autodesk Portland employees with two of our customers a field trip of a mass timber building designed by Skylab Architecture constructed by Anderson Construction and located a block from our Autodesk Portland office. Following the building tour, we loaded up on a shuttle and went to Northwest Portland for a tour of CutMyTimber’s NW Portland shop with Hundegger Speed-Cut SC-1, Hundegger K2, and Kuka automation which was used in making the beams for the B76 building. CutMyTimber’s Greg Howes and Stefan Schneider arranged and accompanied us on this tour after we had many employees interested in the B76 (Sideyard) building and the mass timber process. It is also an example where you see the convergence of AEC and manufacturing processes using more sustainable materials and a faster building process. We had been dying to have a look inside the B76 building for months since we literally watched it being built out our windows and witnessed how fast the structural wood beams went up on the building. Anderson Construction’s Aadne Tonning graciously led us on a tour of B76 telling us all the fine details of the construction and the buildings features.
Our Autodesk Portland office has many new buildings in this fast changing and developing Central Eastside Industrial District at the east end of the Burnside Bridgehead.
They constructed B76 on a small strip of land surrounded by streets.
https://www.skylabarchitecture.com/work/b76/
”A leftover 20,000 sq ft. berm space was created when the City of Portland built the new one-way Couch Street couplet reconnecting the roadway to the Burnside Bridge.
Sideyard was designed as a working class building aimed at public transportation connectivity, pedestrian openness, and bicycle priority access.
It is positioned centrally in the new eastside community envisioned by the Burnside Bridgehead Framework plan. The ground floor will be activated by storefront along third avenue and work space above. This new building program will also reintegrate a pedestrian stair down from the Burnside Bridge level to third avenue akin to the original stairs that previously existed.”
Notes from Autodesk employee Joel Morrissette on a B76 tour with design highlights.
”The city required that the windows not pop out in case of an earthquake. The frames are mounted in rails at the bottom, with these keyed rails at the top. The floor above can move 3" (!!) and the windows will stay put thanks to those slots.”
“The center partitions in the stairwells are 60-foot tall, 1-foot thick plywood pieces that were lowered through the roof before they dried in.” This was CLP cross laminated plywood product called mass plywood MPP from Freres Lumber.
“The center columns were a constant-pour with wooden forms. The forms were reused, so that texture gets more pronounced on the upper floors. The wood has been recycled into a barn somewhere in Eastern Oregon”
“The only cuts the team made were on outside edges of the floor panels.
Even the stairs were pre-fabbed, with treads, risers and stringers all cut to length off-site. Even the tread nose was milled for the metal corners. The stairs were assembled in-place, and the team jammed through it since no cuts were required. The tread edges are thick exposed ply, and they're going to be gorgeous with finish.”
You can see our office from the B76 SW facing units
Photos from the field trip
B76
Tour of CutMyTimber shop
A big KUKA robot!
Great Notion Brewing for discussions and the possibility of an amazing cold beverage.
Thank you to CutMyTimber and Anderson Construction for hosting the employees and answering all of our questions. It was highly educational on mass timber sourcing, design, fabrication, and construction. We also know more about our new neighboring building and looking forward to Ferment Brewing of Hood River moving in. Thanks also for Great Notion Brewing being across the alley for cool beverages on a hot summer day.
Understanding how our customers make things and the changing industries and resources helps us design and make better products and be prepared for the Future of Making.
Cheers,
Shaan
