Architect’s rendering shows the new mass-timber residential building that will soon begin construction in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood. Images: Generate Architecture and Technologies
Architect's rendering shows the new mass-timber residential building that will soon begin construction in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood. Images: Generate Architecture and Technologies A five-story mixed-use structure in Roxbury represents a new kind of net-zero-energy building, made from wood. A new building about to take shape in Boston's Roxbury area could, its designers hope, herald a new way of building residential structures in cities. Designed by architects from MIT and the design and construction firm Placetailor, the five-story building's structure will be made from cross-laminated timber (CLT), which eliminates most of the greenhouse-gas emissions associated with standard building materials. It will be assembled on site mostly from factory-built subunits, and it will be so energy-efficient that its net carbon emissions will be essentially zero. Most attempts to quantify a building's greenhouse gas contributions focus on the building's operations, especially its heating and cooling systems. But the materials used in a building's construction, especially steel and concrete, are also major sources of carbon emissions and need to be included in any realistic comparison of different types of construction.
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