SUSAN JONES WINS AIA SEATTLE GOLD MEDAL

atelierjones founder and principal Susan Jones was awarded the 2024 AIA Seattle Gold Medal, recognizing distinguished lifetime achievement in architecture, including design and professional practice and service to the profession, the community, education and the arts.

RISING FROM THE ASHES | SIERRA INSTITUTE HOMES

NBC Bay Area News came to visit our local home owner, Ken Donell and feature the Greenville, California community’s amazingly resilient response to the Dixie Fire devastation which occurred just two years ago, destroying over 1,000 structures in the small town in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Today, three houses are just weeks away from move-in. As Jennifer Gray Thompson of the Bay Area fire response group After The Fire says in the coverage, “They’re very creative, they’re very innovative…to see this amazing wildfire resistant, really climate resistant [house] go up here, really the most impressive example I’ve seen in six years of doing this work.” atelierjones is so honored to be working with the Sierra Institute for Community and Environment and Mass Timber Strategy on this important project.

Roundhouse to Begin Construction

The Maidu Roundhouse Cultural Center is moving forward with funding towards a late summer start for construction! Thank you to the incredible effort from the Sierra Institute and the willpower of the Roundhouse members to secure the funding needed to push the project forward from design into construction. atelierjones is expecting the permit in August and is working closely with Vaagen Timbers to approve the shop drawings. The builders will begin with groundwork on the site this month. This major step forward for Roundhouse exemplifies the resilience of the community around shared purpose: environmental and cultural justice. We are thrilled and honored to work with the Maidu and additional partners on this project.

The Architect's Newspaper's Best Firm (small) in the West - 2023

We are so excited to share that The Architect’s Newspaper has awarded atelierjones Best Architecture Firm (small) in the West alongside national leaders in design practices across the US for 2023. The Architect’s Magazine acknowledged that beyond the design merit of individual projects, how do you recognize excellence in the overall impact and values of a firm? Executive Editor Jack Murphy explains how atelierjones stands out: “Susan Jones’s leadership surrounding mass timber in Seattle is remarkable. Her work to introduce the technology into the ICC building code set the stage for the growing popularity of this structural system today. This is a major accomplishment!” We celebrate the award for our mighty and nimble team that beautifully executes fine details on large and small projects and has had enormous national impact introducing lower carbon design at scale to the United States!

Summer Retreat to Mt. Constitution

Last weekend, team atelierjones left downtown Seattle for Orcas Island to retreat from the city and into the woods. Susan led the team winding up Mt. Constitution to reach her family’s forest, a site for extensive restoration across multiple generations.

Everyone geared up with hardhats and axes to trim, collect, and pile thinned wood, making room in overstocked areas for sunlight and new growth. In these woods, time is a blink, and a tree is a drop in the ocean. A few hours of clearing and stacking wood feels satisfying; a small accomplishment in the lifetime of the forest. For atelierjones, working directly with timber inspires care and attention towards how we source and design with the material. Susan’s love and dedication towards the forest’s enduring health is reflected in how she continues to encourage family and friends to learn about and to work with wood in a lifelong project that keeps giving back to people.

atelierjones gathered on the deck of Constitution Shed, a small structure crafted from windfall trees found on site, to reflect on the past year. From the construction of one of the first tall mass timber workforce housing buildings in the US to the prefabrication of timber modular homes replacing those lost in a wildfire, each project ties back to sustainably sourcing wood. The tight-knit team’s greatest strength is balancing each other’s expertise across project management, technical detailing, strategic relations, and design, which allows them to navigate variegated project types together.

Moving forward, atelierjones will continue to tell the breadth of stories embedded in our design process because the depth of meaning in our work comes from the web of collaborations involved in each project. Our goal is to grow together through a shared vision with our network of partners, much like the thriving relationship between trees in the forest.

Evenings on the beach lit by campfires and enlivened with personal stories brought the group closer together. Susan’s family cabin provided a beautiful setting and creature comforts to make new memories through cooking meals, playing card games, and exploring the landscape. The weekend culminated in a day of hiking, swimming, and painting to relish the sunshine before returning to Seattle. We settled comfortably back into our new home at the Bullitt Center, refreshed and ready for the busy summer ahead.

Sierra Nevada Modular Mass Timber Homes featured

atelierjones’ mass timber, fire-hardened modular houses are just finishing up construction in Greenville, CA, and Architectural Record took careful note and published this wonderful article describing the homes, but more, the complexity and nuances of rebuilding resiliently in a remote, rural post-fire environment, using regional wood and local resources as possible. Thank you!

HEARTWOOD TOPS OUT

Construction on Heartwood’s superstructure is completed, marking a huge milestone for Washington’s tallest timber building! The final CLT panels were craned into place on December 9, 2022, with roofing soon to follow. Thanks to the building’s innovative mass timber system, years of intense trade coordination, and a hardworking on-site team, the structure has been completed in just eight short months.

HEARTWOOD WINS AIASEATTLE RESEARCH AWARD

Heartwood wins its first award — an AIASeattle Research Award for the first proof-of-concept Type IV-C building under construction in the US. Under the rigorous jury, led by Billie Faircloth, FAIA, LEED AP BD+C, the award celebrated the highly collaborative team’s work over three years to design, entitle, permit, price, and build the 67,000 SF 126-unit mass timber building. Our wildly talented and dedicated interdisciplinary team is thrilled to be working on such an impactful project with our owners at Community Roots Housing.

HEARTWOOD CLT PANELS ARRIVE ON SITE

The first shipment of CLT panels have arrived at our Community Roots Housing Heartwood construction site in Capitol Hill as of August 25, 2022. CLT Panels made by Kalesnikoff are currently being craned into place and positioned precisely over the glulam columns and beams engineered by DCI Engineers, fabricated by DR Johnson and Mass Plywood Panel stairs by Freres Lumber, all post-processed by TimberLab. Click here to see live aerial updates, thanks to our contractor, Swinerton Builders. What a great team!

ATELIERJONES RETREAT AT THE CONSTITUTION SHED

Lots of great thinking and planning for the future going on at atelierjones at our annual retreat! We definitely decided we would keep on seeing more of the incredible Pacific Northwest Mass Timber resources - from forests to factories to buildings. And we started with the Mt. Constitution Forest Camp - thinning hemlocks and spruce trees, to bring more light and diversity into the remote mountain forest that we are tendering.

METHOD HOMES VISIT

The Wet Core is moving ahead at record pace! atelierjones visited the three wetcores under construction at the Method Homes Factory earlier this week, and were excited to see them completely framed and mechanical/electrical/plumbing rough-in starting. The factory build was high quality, and it was exciting to see how much had been accomplished in just two weeks. These prefabricated wetcore modules will be the first of three mass timber modular homes to be built this summer and fall in the Sierra Nevada town of Greenville, CA, which was destroyed in the Dixie Fire in August 2021. atelierjones is leading the design and prefabrication process with Method and DR Johnson, who is supplying the mass timber structure for the homes.

TIMBERLAB VISIT

atelierjones visited Timberlab in Portland, OR, where they saw Mass Timber prefabricated elements undergoing production for our Heartwood workforce 126-unit workforce residential building. On display were the Freres produced mass plywood panel (MPP) Exit Stairs going through post-processing at Timberlab, and a mockup of Heartwood’s innovative all-wood beam to column connection.

SIERRA INSTITUTE SAWMILL RIBBON CUTTING

On May 18, 2022, atelierjones visited Greenville, CA, where four of their mass timber homes will be erected in the fall to help rebuild the town after it was devastated in the Dixie Fire of 2021. They also participated in the Sierra Institute’s ribbon cutting ceremony for a new sawmill on their wood utilization campus. The mill will bring jobs back to the area, provide local lumber to help rebuild the town of Greenville, and salvage charred ponderosa pines.

HEARTWOOD IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION

atelierjones’ mass timber middle-income housing project, Heartwood, officially started construction as of April 4, 2022. The eight-story, mass timber Heartwood is one of 15 Tall Wood Buildings (defined as 8 stories or over) either under construction or completed in North America. It is the first Type IV-C building under construction in the US. Construction is scheduled for completion in March 2023

CTBUH @ Chicago | ATELIERJONES PRESENTS ON TALL WOOD | STEEL HYBRID HEARTWOOD

At Mies van der Rohe’s beautiful S.R. Crown Hall, at IIT Chicago, atelierjones presented their Type IV-C Heartwood Tall Wood Middle-Income Housing project at the Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, CTBUH Spring Conference, on Steel-Timber Hybrid Buildings from May 23-24, 2022. Heartwood’s superstructure is a glu-lam post and beam, with CLT floor/ceiling assembly, that utilizes a robust steel Buckling Restrained Brace (BRB) Frame system with steel drag struts, for its lateral system, as part of the core of the building. The well-attended international conference sought to advance hybrid structural systems of Mass Timber and Steel to reach the potential of Tall Wood buildings across North America and Europe. Currently, Heartwood is one of 15 Tall Wood Buildings (defined as 8 stories or over) either under construction or completed in North America.

CONSTITUTION SHED wins AIASeattle award!

A small off-grid restored SHED used to support forest restoration on a remote island mountaintop, Constitution SHED layers built reflections of site, ecologies, memory and legacy. The simple, utilitarian SHED, located high on a remote mountaintop on a Pacific Northwest island, had lost its functional purpose as a support structure for a large water tank, and its strong proportions had been slowly decaying for decades. The grandfather of the owner/architect had built the SHED, as a protection against fires high on the then nearly inaccessible mountain. Upon refinding the SHED, decades later, during intense forest restoration efforts of the long-neglected mountain island forest, the owner/architect had the SHED relocated to a island local workshop, to restore the stalwart proportions and the 80 year old Douglas Fir boards that had once been milled on site

MASS TIMBER GOES HIGH WITH WOODAND LOW WITH CARBON

Susan Jones joins Building Better Podcast Episode 9 to talk about the many threads of mass timber and how her career and firm, atelierjones has evolved alongside this climate-friendly strategy.

Listen to Episode 9 Here

DISRUPTIVE ECOLOGIES GOES TO SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Susan spoke at the beautiful historic Riverside, California Fox Auditorium in early September, for CBU/AIA Inland California. See the lecture here - students, professionals, and faculty, as well as the general public attended - all masked, socially distant and in person in the large historic theatre. A beautiful evening.

watch here

ALTA LIVE!

Excited to present for ALTA LIVE! ALTA Magazine is an important emerging journalistic West Coast-forward voice out of Los Angeles, with a broad environmentalist and cultural vision for our cities and landscapes. Looking forward to lending our atelierjones’ perspective on forests, lower-carbon construction, and design-forward, sustainable architecture from the single family homes to mass timber affordable and workforce housing apartments. With Scott Shell, journalist Lydia Lee and editor Beth Spotswood. Live: Tuesday 6/2 12:30 pm PST.

INNOVATION IN ARCHITECTURE AWARD from WAN

Thrilled to be recognized internationally for our innovative work with mass timber, from our small house to our current 8-story mass timber housing project, and of course, helping to lower the construction industry's carbon footprint through new codes, fire/lifesafety, and lower carbon construction at scale. Thank you to all our valued atelierjones colleagues and national collaborators!