YAKAMA NATION FOREST TOUR

Many thanks to the Yakama Nation for hosting us, along with the AIA Seattle Mass Timber Committee, on a tour of their forest land and the Yakama Forest Products mill.

SUMMER RETREAT 2024

The atelierjones team enjoyed another summer retreat to Orcas Island. We spent time kayaking, eating, working in the forest, and celebrating a successful year. On Sunday we were treated to an amazing sight - a pod of Orca whales appeared, and spent an hour swimming and jumping in the bay as we watched from the rocks.

CRTC VISIT

Thanks to Geoffrey Wood and the rest of the Composite Recycling Technology Center team in Port Angeles for hosting us and our research collaborators from the University of Washington School of Forestry. It was inspiring to see their work with Mass Timber and recycled carbon fiber, which is pushing our industry forward and bringing new sustainable jobs to the Olympic Peninsula. We hope this is only the beginning!

AIA SEATTLE TOURS KENMORE HOUSE

atelierjones’ Kenmore house played host to AIA Seattle’s Mass Timber and Small Practice and Residential Committees for their May site tour. The weather was beautiful as we toured the house under construction, joined by 50 local architects and professionals. After only one month above grade, the mass timber and interior framing has been completed, and we look forward to completion later this year!

ATELIERJONES AT THE 2024 iMTC

We’re looking forward to another year of seeing old friends and colleagues and meeting new ones at the International Mass Timber Conference. We hope you can join us for the Thursday sessions, where Meghan Doring will present Mass Timber Modular Housing: Scaling and It’s Challenges, and Susan will share the recent results of Heartwood’s Life Cycle Analysis in Transparency in Materials, Carbon Accounting, and Next Life Re-Use. See you out on the floor!

VAAGEN VISIT

atelierjones visted Vaagen Timbers at their Colville, Washington headquarters. The visit coincided with the final production of CLT panels for the Roundhouse, and the team got to watch as the panels were pressed and prepared for delivery to Greenville, California. Thanks to Vaagen for hosting us, and for playing a valuable part in our regional woodbasket!

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.

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.