Exogenous forces are reshaping building markets among the 19 real estate product sectors comprising most of America’s built environment. The real estate development value chain is being recast in sectors like fuel retail, fast food, grocery, and warehousing, while new venture-capital interventions are hybridizing housing, hospitality, healthcare, and the senior services markets in value-adding ways. Meanwhile, pockets of low-density metropolitan fabrics—the non-downtown environments encompassing suburbs, small towns, villages, edge cities, exurban areas, and rural areas, which house 85 percent of America’s population —are densifying in response to consumer demand for walkable, mixed-use environments. Disruptions are driving innovation in each of these 19 real estate product sectors, but they are primarily technological and social. Building outcomes conspicuously lack best sustainability practices necessary to build a next-generation green economy. Mass timber technology can play a key role in ensuring that the massive levels of resources the U.S. will allocate to building the next generation of human settlements—close to $1.5 trillion just in 2020—are not squandered by poor practices in energy conservation, carbon reduction, ecosystem stewardship, nonrenewable resource conservation, and climate change mitigation. More than ever, the resiliency of critical human support systems is based upon the competent modeling of climate unknowns in future development.
Awards
2023 London International Creative Competition Official Selection—Architecture
2021 Fast Company Innovation by Design Awards Cities Category Honorable Mention
2021 The Plan Awards: Special Projects Winner
2021 Green GOOD DESIGN Award
Client
Weyerhaeuser Giving Fund
