Joe Mayo ’08 Brings Multi-Story Timber Technology to Northwest

Joe Mayo will be combing high-rise construction sites, timber manufacturers and code-enforcement offices in Oslo, London, Berlin and Austria this summer for ideas to help make Seattle the first carbon-neutral city in the world.

“In the midst of a cascading environmental crisis, now is the time to re-examine wood construction as a sustainable material that, as proved by many European examples, can be used safely in high-rise and mid-rise urban applications such as Seattle,” says Mayo, winner of the 2011 Seattle AIA Emerging Professionals Travel Scholarship and a 2008 graduate of the University of Oregon’s architecture program.

The $5,000 grant will allow him to travel abroad to study timber framing in multi-story buildings, using his findings to make recommendations to better harness the carbon mitigation benefits of wood construction. Most cities restrict the use of wood framing above a few floors, but Mayo points to several international cities that have embraced wood as a new, sustainable technology.

“I think it’s really exciting to think of wood buildings returning to our urban cores,” says Mayo His grant proposal –“Timber City|Wood Towers: mid-rise and high-rise construction in wood” – looks at how to make Seattle the first carbon-neutral city.

With the Pacific Northwest’s long history of building with wood, Mayo hopes to push this architectural regionalism further, from multifamily housing to large-scale institutional buildings. He notes that timber requires no human inputs to grow, is renewable, carbon-negative and has a better strength-to-weight ratio than steel. Such buildings also take less time and money to build.

“Wood ties us back to our environment,” he says. “There is a legacy of using wood in the Northwest, and one can really imagine the wonderful architecture that could emerge from this. This research is a way to engage in climate change and fight for a healthier environment both locally and globally.” Mayo works for Mahlum, a design firm with offices in Portland and Seattle.