Page 10 - CodeWatcher Summer 2017
P. 10
News & Trends
First Wood High-Rise
to Be Built in Oregon
Framework seeks to pave the way for other wood buildings
by creating new building code precedents.
BY ERIN SCHROEDER
ENEFICIAL STATE BANK has teamed with Approval for a high-rise wood structure requires an alterna-
project^, a values-based commercial real tive approach to the prescriptive building code involving the
estate developer, and Home Forward, the City of Portland and State of Oregon, which building officials
public housing authority for Multnomah called a “performance-based path.” This process includes the
County, Ore., to create Framework. This testing of engineered wood products to meet equivalencies of
project will be the nation’s first wood high- a steel and/or concrete conventional building.
Brise and is designed by LEVER Architecture. According to the press release, “The fire, structural, and
The building “seeks to develop a model for a sustainable acoustic research and testing to support Framework, in part
urban ecology by promoting social justice, sustainable with the funding from the U.S. Tall Wood Building Prize Com-
building, and economic opportunity thus yielding broad petition, is intended to provide a permitting pathway for fu-
advancement of these objectives at a national scale,” ture tall wood buildings by clearing specific permitting hurdles
according to a press release. related to fire and life safety and structural requirements.”
10 CodeWatcher / Summer 2017 www.codewatcher.us
