The Museum’s “Mass Timber Semester” lecture series, which brings together key voices in the Mass Timber movement to reflect on its short history, current condition, and promising future, begins with an IN-PERSON program to be held at the office of the international engineering firm Arup, at 77 Water St. in lower Manhattan.
The opening program features architects Thomas Robinson of Portland, Oregon-based LEVER Architecture and Chris Sharples of SHoP in New York City to discuss their first Mass Timber high-rise designs and to link those beginnings to their current work. In 2015, Robinson and SHoP were the co-winners of the U.S. Tall Wood Building Prize, a government-sponsored competition directed at stimulating innovation in high-rise applications in Mass Timber construction. While neither Framework – LEVER’s proposal for a 12-story, mixed-use building – nor 475 W. 18 St., SHoP’s design for a 10-story Manhattan apartment building near the High Line, were ultimately built, the projects advanced the goals of establishing fire, seismic, and other testing to apply to later projects.
Over the past decade, LEVER and SHoP have continued to explore Mass Timber. On the West Coast, LEVER is completing several large-scale commissions, including the Adidas Headquarters Expansion in Portland, Oregon, and a creative office complex in L.A., 843 N Spring Street, as well as the addition to the Portland (Maine) Museum of Art. SHoP’s portfolio in wood includes two tech headquarters across continents, the new headquarters for YouTube in San Bruno, California and the award-winning Atlassian Central in Sydney, Australia. A 42-story Mass Timber, steel, and concrete tower, Atlassian Central will become the world’s tallest hybrid Mass Timber building upon completion in 2027.
Jeff Spiritos, the development manager for 475 W. 18th St., will be the moderator for the discussion of “lessons learned” and next steps for tall Mass Timber buildings.
Upon clicking the RSVP button above, you will be redirected to Ticketstripe where you will receive instructions for check-in after registration. For building security purposes, you must register online for this program. Priority RSVP is given to Museum members and Corporate Members. If you have questions, please call the Museum’s office at (212) 945-6324.
The in-person program is limited to 90 attendees, but the program will also be live streamed to the Museum’s Youtube channel. If the event is sold out or you cannot attend in-person, we invite you to join us on Youtube. You do NOT need to RSVP to join the Youtube livestream.
Thomas Robinson is the Founder and Principal of LEVER Architecture. Prior to establishing the firm, Thomas led cultural and institutional projects for Allied Works and Herzog & de Meuron. He received an MArch from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley.
Christopher Sharples is a founding principal of SHoP, an architecture firm in Lower Manhattan, New York City, with projects located on five continents. Currently, Chris’s concentration is on revolutionary models of building that embrace next-generation environmental and materials systems such as bio-based material systems, as well as process-driven innovation utilizing offsite manufacturing to achieve more efficient and environmentally responsive building delivery.
The Museum thanks Arup for the generous donation of their event space for this program.
