Top 10 Projects of 2024
Think Wood’s top 10 projects of 2024 showcase innovative applications for wood structural solutions across commercial building typologies, highlighting mass timber and light-frame construction’s potential to drive change in the built environment.
Each of the projects Think Wood featured this year demonstrates how wood structural solutions can solve design challenges or bring significant benefits to the developer or occupants—from faster construction to a smaller carbon footprint, benefits for occupants, and much more. Many of these projects are gaining significant attention from the design and construction community, from an NBA training facility jam-packed with biophilic design elements to a hospitality project using prefab and light-frame wood construction to speed the timeline on a formidably steep site. Our top 10 project profiles of 2024 exemplify creative and sustainable design approaches that make the most of wood’s beauty and versatility. Check them out below, and learn more about the mass timber structural systems that can transform your next project.
Victory Capital Performance Center
Optimizing Human Performance with a Biophilic Boost
As the largest mass timber training facility in U.S. professional sports, the Victory Capital Performance Center is changing the game when it comes to long-span wood construction for high-performance athletic buildings. Home to practice facilities and basketball operations for the San Antonio Spurs, the light-filled mass timber and concrete structure is a contemporary nod to the region’s iconic Mission-style architecture while providing a column-free sports venue with unique biophilic wellness features.
“Players live in an endless cycle of travel with no time outside, disrupting their rhythm and recovery. We turned to organic materials, like mass timber, and a design that draws in sunlight throughout the duration of the day and gives access to the outdoors whenever possible.”
Kathy Berg, AIA, LEED AP® BD+C
Partner | ZGF Architects
Texas Tree House
A Timeless, Meticulously Crafted Residence
Faye + Walker’s thoughtfully designed, budget-friendly Tree House—a multi-level family home and guest quarters built in stages over five years—was constructed with the very intentional choice to frame everything with wood. The project showcases how wood can achieve a slender, almost gravity-defying lightness. By carefully engineering minimal sections, architects were able to use exposed wood in ways that feel elegant and refined.
“For me, the light-frame design of a residential project like this is my favorite part—and where it all starts. I really aim to develop a robust set of drawings with precise measurements, focusing primarily on the framing and structural detailing.”
Sean Guess, AIA
Faye + Walker Architecture
Kresge College Expansion
Nestling Wood Construction into a Forested Landscape
When Kresge College at the University of California, Santa Cruz, felt the effects of the housing shortage, Chicago-based Studio Gang added to the architectural caliber of the site with three new residence halls and the 37,000-square-foot Kresge College Academic Center—all designed and built using hybrid structures of mass timber, concrete, and light-frame construction. Mass timber provided benefits on the small, constricted site during construction—including requiring a smaller crew for erection.
“The use of mass timber reflects the ecology of the environment where this building is located.”
Alex Wilson
Senior Design Engineer | Magnusson Klemencic Associates
LC Germantown
A Far Cry From Conventional Multifamily Development
To break free from the sometimes banal, uniform multifamily design, Memphis-based LRK proposed a range of light-frame buildings that took advantage of offsite prefabricated construction to honor the architectural character and culture of the surrounding area and animate the streetscape with a variety of building volumes and scales. LC Germantown makes heavy use of panelized light-frame construction fabricated off-site and assembled on-site using a just-in-time method.
“We likely saved months with this simplified, prefab light-frame method. Everything happens quickly when all the materials are right there, ready to go.”
Mike Sullivan
Principal and Designer | LRK Inc.
Humbird Hotel
Tackling Tricky Terrain with Mass Timber
Faced with a formidably steep site, Skylab turned to prefab mass timber and on-site light-frame construction for the Humbird Hotel in northern Idaho. The prefabricated hybrid mass timber solution was not only well-suited to the project’s challenging locale but also reflected the area’s heritage, once the site of a working forest and sawmill. The project’s generous use of wood serves triple duty—as a lightweight building system well-suited for the site; as a natural, renewable material; and as a warm, welcoming aesthetic historic to the region.
“Timber was not just a material choice for the project; it was a catalyst for the entire design process.”
Brent Grubb
Principal and Co-founder | Skylab
Barry Mills Hall and the John and Lile Gibbons Center for Arctic Studies
Reducing Embodied Carbon with Mass Timber
Bowdoin College’s new Barry Mills Hall and the John and Lile Gibbons Center for Arctic Studies are the first commercial mass timber projects to be completed in the state. Designed by Minneapolis-based HGA, the two-building complex is located on the eastern edge of the private liberal arts school’s campus in Brunswick, Maine. Bowdoin College became the third college in the United States to achieve carbon neutrality in 2018 and, in keeping with the school’s dedication to environmental stewardship, HGA completed a lifecycle analysis on the project’s structural systems to quantify the mass timber’s carbon impact. The embodied carbon savings of the timber structure was 75-80% over a conventional steel structure, according to HGA.
“Maine is just so deeply rooted in forestry. To be able to tell that story from an architectural perspective was really important.”
Lauren Piepho
Associate Vice President and Structural Engineer | HGA
Buchanan Riverhouse
A Balance of Fir and Form
On a rural, 14.6-acre site in southwest Michigan, Searl Lamaster Howe has created a comfortable all-season wooded family retreat that, at 2,946 square feet, can readily accommodate as many as 14 visitors. The ample use of cedar was central to the project, and the clients refer to the complex as Cedar Ridge Farm, a reference to their shared Lebanese heritage. The exterior is clad in a stained red cedar vertical lap siding. On the interior, Douglas fir beams are exposed, providing a rustic feel.
“We tried to select materials that were a little more rustic and a little more traditional flavor.”
Greg Howe
Partner | Searl Lamaster Howe
Marcus Center
Tall Timber Soars to New Heights
The City of Milwaukee recently announced a one-year exclusive negotiation with a team led by Madison, Wisconsin-based developer Neutral and Vancouver, British Columbia-based Michael Green Architecture to produce designs for a 1.2-million-square-foot mixed-use project on a downtown parcel that currently contains the Marcus Performing Arts Center parking garage. The initial concept for the site envisions a mass timber tower with as many as 55 stories, which would surpass the 25-story Ascent—just six blocks away—as the tallest mass timber and concrete structure in the world.
Bremer Banks
Linking Community and Local Context With Wood Construction
When Minneapolis-based architecture firm Snow Kreilich Architects was brought in to create a “playbook” for regional Bremer Bank’s new and remodeled facilities, the team wanted to emphasize the bank’s focus on trust and relationships. The use of wood isn’t required by the playbook, but its thoughtful deployment is central to this regional approach. In Fargo, for example, designers were intrigued by the idea of wooded elements defining space in the landscape, so they introduced a Douglas fir glulam screen to stitch the two floors together.
“We were looking for an element that could be that tall. We ended up with this raw glulam piece that we staggered in size to give a little bit of depth to this screen and a little bit more screening functionality.”
Kathryn Van Nelson
Senior Associate | Snow Kreilich Architects
University of Nebraska Lincoln College of Architecture Expansion
Timber as a Teaching Tool
Currently under construction, the new University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Architecture Expansion is a collaboration between Boston-based NADAAA and locally based HDR. The building will be one of the first mass timber architecture schools in the United States and promises to be a unique new teaching tool. With a focus on sustainability and carbon reduction, the addition was initially designed to be 100% mass timber, but the team developed a more cost-efficient design by converting the interstitial support spaces between the existing building and the new studios to conventional steel framing.
“We realized that as an open loft studio space, it’s the right space within which you get the warmth of wood, but the genuine representation of an exposed raw structure that you don’t really get to do in most other architectures.”
Nader Tehrani
Design Principal | NADAAA
