Mass Timber Construction Podcast
Mass Timber Construction Podcast
Mass Timber Market Updates - September 2025 - Week ThirtyEight
Big moves in mass timber are landing across sport, offices, research labs, and civic spaces—and the ripple effects are hard to ignore. We kick off with Fukushima United FC’s proposed 5,000‑seat timber stadium, a circular design that aims to reduce waste, maximise reuse, and stand as a sign of recovery for a community shaped by the 2011 disaster. From modular elements to reversible connections, the vision doubles as a blueprint for how mid‑scale venues can evolve over decades without locking in carbon or demolition costs.
Then we head to Sweden, where the Fire Torrent office tower climbs to 51.5 metres without a concrete core. Glulam frames, CLT slabs, and integrated solar show how a fabric‑first approach can deliver stability, performance, and character. We unpack what this means for lateral systems, fire safety, and whole‑life carbon, and why pure timber towers expand the design space beyond familiar hybrids. If you’re tracking tall timber, this one belongs on your watchlist.
The research front brings a potential game‑changer: Swiss teams demonstrate that timber walls with windows can resist over 100 kN of horizontal load, challenging a long‑held assumption that often forced overdesign. Better data on openings unlocks smarter layouts, more daylight, and lower embodied carbon, while paving the way for code updates. We connect those findings to real projects, including Northstowe’s Unity Centre—now topped out with an exposed CLT frame, a sawtooth roof, and a flexible program of hall, café, civic offices, and co‑working. Finally, we spotlight Scotland’s BEST innovation campus relaunch and its Mass Timber Centre for Excellence inside the national retrofit hub, where industry, academia, and policymakers will accelerate testing, training, and circular construction.
If low‑carbon building, circular design, and code‑level evidence matter to you, this update delivers the signals you need. Follow the links on our LinkedIn feed for visuals and research, subscribe for weekly updates, and share this episode with someone who still thinks wood can’t go tall or carry the load. Got a paper or case study to publish? Send it our way and help move the field forward.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are alive. This is the moment you all have been a waiting on. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. We're everywhere in the world today. This is Paul Kramer with the Mass Timber Construction Podcast Global Update. Once again, thank you, Bruce Buffer, veteran voice of the Off the Gone, for doing the intro for our podcast for five years now. It's been great to have you on board. And don't forget the International Mass Timber Conference celebrating 10 years from 31st of March to 2nd of April 2026. And the Mass Timber International Seminar Conference Series at Rothoblast. Get your tickets now, register. They will be limited spots happening in uh early December. So head to Rothoblast, head to the International Mass Timber Conference website pages, and you'll be able to register for both events. And you'll be lucky enough if you can get to both. It would be a great six months of traveling and knowledge acquisition. Let's have a look at what's making news around the world this week in Mass Timber Construction Land. And the Fukushima United FC Football Club announces plans for a new timber stadium in Fukushima Prefecture in Japan, designed in collaboration with architecture startup VUILD VILD. The development is a 5,000-seat venue, and the project introduces the country's first circular timber stadium concept, envisaged as a model for sustainable and community-driven architecture. The proposal positions the stadium as a symbol of recovery as it will occupy a region that current continues to carry the memory of the 2011 earthquake and the nuclear disaster that was associated with it at the Fukushima reactor plan. Within this context, the project is forward-looking gesture for resilience, with resilience and circular design embedded in the architecture, and the stadium is intended to be a lasting expression of the spirit of the area. The images are impressive. We've got two LinkedIn posts. One of them has very, very detailed design drawings in renders for this project. Do check it out, it is a highly anticipated project, and yeah, we look forward to seeing the Fukushima stadium come to life. The Fire Torrent uh lighthouse project located in Sweden consists of glue-laminated timber and beams and diagonals with CLT floor slabs. At its core, it provides structural integrity and houses the stair system made from CLT with some concrete elements used in the building, only through the foundation. The facade combines wood that has been painted red, the spruce shingles and the glazing are integrated with solar panels, helping to reduce its draw on the electrical grid. It's one of the most modern towers, like the 230 Royal Oak and Ascent project, featuring a concrete core for stability. However, Fire Torrent Office Tower is uh rising at an impressive height of 51.5 meters without the need for concrete, highlighting the potential of sustainable possibilities of using timber construction. This is an amazing project. If you want to go and check it out, you know where to head to our LinkedIn feed. And Swiss researchers has overturned the assumption that windowed timber walls offer no structural support after they proved that they can withstand more than 100 kN of horizontal load. The breakthrough led by a PhD student and a researcher at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Material Science and Technology came up with a series of large-scale experiments alongside ETH Zurich and Bern University. Wow, that's a powerful trio. And the research marks the culmination of four-year national innovative project to address the critical blind spot of timber engineering involving the lack of structural data for walls with window openings. Neither in Switzerland nor in European countries are there currently any regulations governing how much horizontal loaded timber frame wall can bear, and it contains a window opening, says one of the researchers. If you want to have a look at this impressive research, we've got a link to it on our LinkedIn feed. Please do go check it out. And a topping out ceremony has taken place to celebrate the final construction piece of North Stowe's Unity Centre being placed onto this magnificent milestone project in the community centre, which they've produced in the South Cambridge's District Council. The installation of sustainable CLT frame took place between May and July this year, revealing the body of the building. The window and door installation and roof are nearly completed, and the lower level brickwork processing to the elevators is uh almost done. Exposing timber has been treated to allow internal walls to progress as they are the initial phase of the mechanical and electrical work, and then upcoming external works include the PV sole panels on the roof and green roof installation. The state-of-the-art facility will include a large multi-purpose main hall, a welcoming foyer to host a cafe, plus a base for staff and the town hall council office people to use, as well as have meeting rooms and co-show share work places designed for arts and craft workmanship. The building under construction photos look incredible. It's a sawtooth roof, it has a great external facade, and it is uh made of mass timber, so it's a very sustainable building. And staying in the region, the BEST built environment Smarter Transformation has officially relaunched its innovation campus by welcoming stakeholders to see the newly equipped Mass Timber Centre for Excellence in Scotland's new retrofitted national retrofit centre. The event held at the Best Innovation Campus in Hamilton marked the first event in the Best Fest in 2025, a fringe festival brought together by industry leaders, academics, policymakers, and innovators coming together to showcase the campus's new facility, explore collaboration opportunities, and mark the start of the next chapter of Best. Congratulations to the entire team. I know you work tirelessly to try and transform the industry, and we appreciate all that you do. And that's it, folks. That's all we've got time for this week in Mass Timber Construction Land. We hope that you have an amazing week ahead. Don't forget to like, subscribe, comment, share any of our content. Please submit your academic manuscript for our journal. We would really love to see more papers come through, and we thank you for tuning in each week. And we've got special guests lined up in the near future. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world today. This is Paul Kramer signing off on the Mass Timber Construction Podcast.