Gray Organschi Principal and Bauhaus Earth Innovation Lab Director, Alan Organschi, is set to deliver a keynote titled “A Role for Forest Products in Climate Restoration” at the upcoming G7 Agriculture Ministers’ Meeting in Miyazaki, Japan on April 21st. The event aims to promote sustainable and circular economic synergies between regenerative forest management and building sector wood. This high-level event provides the opportunity to strengthen policy dialogue, research, and innovation among both G7 and non-G7 member countries in cooperation with international organizations, private sector actors, and research institutions.

Alan will also be opening a second expert panel in Tokyo on April 24th with a captivating talk titled “Rural and Urban Futures in Sustainable Timber Construction.”

More information on the G7 Agriculture Ministers’ Meeting can be found here.

GOA is really pleased to receive this notice from Buildings and Cities Editor-in-Chief Richard Lorch announcing the review of CARBON: A Field Manual for Building Designers by the renowned building lifecycle researcher Dr. Francesco Pomponi. 

Francesco Pomponi applauds this significant book and recommends it as essential reading not only for researchers, but for policy makers, clients, construction professionals, educators and students.

Dr. Pomponi delivers a very positive review stating, "This is a must-read book. It achieves the rare outcome of being a successful volume for design practitioners (who should know what to do) as well as design students (who don’t yet know what to do). But it is also very useful to educators, policymakers, engineers, local authorities, industry professionals and – really – anyone who takes seriously the sheer impacts caused by the global built environment to ecosystems, biodiversity, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, land use, urban fabric transformation, energy demand, social shifts and implications for the lives of millions who live in, or at the margins of, it.

This is probably the best book I have read in the field that successfully handles the complexity (chaos?) of building and construction."

Read the whole review at this link.

A new report explores how offsite mass timber and light-frame wood construction could boost affordability, cut carbon emissions, and speed up construction.

The authors point to 340+ Dixwell Avenue, a New Haven, Connecticut-based affordable housing demonstration project, as a real-life example of what is possible using mass timber and light-frame construction. Designed by Gray Organschi Architecture and Schadler Selnau Associates and developed by the non-profit Beulah Land Development Corporation, Spiritos Properties, and HELP USA, the four-story, two-building complex will maximize the number of apartments in a preferred mix of 1-, 2-, and 3-bedroom units. The project will also provide ground-floor commercial retail space for neighborhood businesses, amenity use, and parking.

You can learn more about the report on the thinkwood blog here.

We are honored to announce that Timber City has won the project of the year at the AIA Connecticut 2022 design awards.

Timber city also won an excellence award in the Architecture: Encompassing art Category. The jury comments were, “Important research and in service of the profession and its future. Well-composed arguments and graphics on the potentials of buildings as carbon sinks and, specifically, what considerations carry most weight to that end.”

The design awards recognize design excellence of built and unbuilt work in Connecticut or in other locations by Connecticut-based firms.

Lisa believes that Gray Organschi’s wide range of project types – from single family homes to institutional projects and bridges, all based in principles of regenerative building – is the foundation for the creative and productive cross-pollination of design and construction knowledge within the practice. In her interview with Amy Stone, she talks about her mission and focus on the environment, advising those just starting their careers to find mentorship. Read the full interview here.

Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion, built for that city’s 1929 International Exhibition, has been celebrated for its elegant use of stainless steel, marble and glass. But what were the environmental consequences of Mies’s material choices? For the next 10 days, visitors to the pavilion (which was dismantled in 1930 and recreated in the 1980s) will be encouraged to consider that question, thanks to an installation built within Mies’s masterwork and made entirely of cross-laminated timber (CLT) from Galician forests.

Alan worked with Vicente Guallart and Daniel Ibañez of Institute for Advanced Architecture in Catalonia (IAAC) on the design of the pavilion. Alan, whose goal is to promote “the use of buildings as a global carbon sink,” also worked with a team from Bauhaus Earth to perform a life cycle analysis for each component of Mies’s building and for equivalent components made of timber.

You can read more about the installation in this Architectural Record article. 

We're excited to announce the opening of “Mass is More," a project created by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and Bauhaus Earth, on October 4, 2022 at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona.

The installation explores the use of regenerative and decarbonizing architectural materials in contemporary buildings. By reconsidering the materials being used in the original pavilion, this new installation reflects on how to regenerate our cities through the use of low-emission practices in order to achieve the EU's environmental targets for 2050.

"Mass is More" is funded by Built by Nature and will host the launch of the Spanish mass timber building network Mass Madera. It is part of the events of the European Forest City 2022 in Barcelona, organized by the European Forest Institute, with the support of the Metropolitan Area and the Barcelona City Council.

The project “Mass is More” will be open to the public until October 9, 2022, at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, Av. Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, 7, 08038 Barcelona, Spain.

Carbon: A Field Manual for Building Designers is a comprehensive approach to design that integrates sustainable principles and design strategies for decarbonized construction

Representing an international collaboration between academics and architects in the United States and Europe, Carbon: A Field Manual for Designers and Builders offers professionals in the field an approach to sustainable design that embraces building science principles, life-cycle analysis, and design strategies in carbon neutral construction. The book also contains background information on carbon in construction materials and in the building design process.

This book is filled with illustrative diagrams and drawings that help evaluate the potential impact of design decisions for creating carbon emissions. Written by and for designers and builders, the book includes a compelling pair of case studies that explore carbon-reducing strategies, suggests steps for assessing a building's carbon footprint, and reviews carbon storages and circulation of materials. The guidelines detailed in the book can be adopted, replicated, and deployed to reduce carbon emissions and create more sustainable buildings.

ACME Timber Lofts has received its first shipments of CLT from SmartLam North America’s Dothan Alabama plant this past week. The first shipment contains the elevator and stair cores for the project.  We will see CLT arriving daily for the next two weeks and are excited to see the overbuild take shape shortly after.

Through the adaptation of a historic masonry building and an innovative expansion with mass timber construction technologies, ACME Lofts will integrate contemporary architectural design and environmentally sensitive building practices into the historic, industrial fabric of New Haven’s city center.

Gray Organschi is happy to be taking part in the preservation of New Haven's rich industrial history at our ACME Timber Lofts project. The 1877 elevator mechanism, possibly the oldest of its kind, and the 1916 elevator mechanism built by Eastern Machinery have been removed from the building and are on their way to the Lost in New Haven museum. See a feature piece about the elevator presevation in the New Haven Register and a story about uncovering 9th Square history in the New Haven Independent.

In the coming months the 150-year-old building will be expanded by two floors using a CLT structural system while preserving the original masonry façade and walls. 

We are happy to announce that the affordable housing project at 340 Dixwell Avenue has broken ground! The project - a collaboration between GOA, Schadler Selnau Associates, HELP USA, and Spiritos Properties - features mass timber and meets passive house energy efficiency standards. See this link to read the article in the New Haven Independent.

The project represents a three-year collaboration between Gray Organschi Architecture through its research and fabrication subsidiary JIG Design Build, the Yale Forests, and Odeh Engineers to develop experimental, laminated structural timber components using wood drawn from northeastern forests for potential future application in low to mid rise urban construction assemblies (IBC Types IV HT and IV C.) The project seeks to analyze anticipated yields and species distributions of regional forests that have been managed and harvested for a range of regenerative silvicultural objectives, such as disease mitigation, soil restoration, biodiversity, water quality, and carbon storage. From that bio-material flow analysis, a proto-typology of mixed-species layups will test the potential of the construction sector—through its adoption and commercial development of these experimental structural components, along with the regional forest management models that inform their configuration— to absorb the diversity of wood fiber drawn from a range of timber stands in the US Northeast. The immediate goal of this experimental process is to demonstrate the range of intrinsic qualities of the many species that populate our northeastern woods and to test their varying capacities to participate in a surging urban bio-building economy.

The project team is committed to this research and experimentation as fundamental to the preservation and expansion of healthy forests in a resource-constrained future in which conventional structural timber components engineered from single species may be supplemented by new hybrid assemblies in order to meet burgeoning regional and potentially global demand.

The Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail recently received $20 million in funding as part of New York State’s Parks Capital Budget. The new funding was reported by several local news outlets - you can read more about it here, here, here, here, and here.

The newly-released "Horizon Europe - New European Bauhaus Nexus Report" is a set of guiding principles for the New Bauhaus Initiative. The recommendations aim to support the core values of sustainability, inclusion, and aesthetics.See this link for the full report as well as a list of Alan's collaborators and co-authors on this exciting work.

Parker Lee, Building Performance Director

Karen Scott, Professional Practice Director

Andrew Ruff, Research Director

Dan Kazer, Fabrication Director

Their formal elevation to these new positions is both celebration of the design leadership that Parker, Karen, Andy, and Dan have each brought to the practice and acknowledgement of their special contributions to the breadth, depth, and capacities of our team.

We also wish to congratulate Brittany Olivari, Andrew Padron, Sonya Ursell, and Jack Wolfe who will now take on new responsibilities as our firm’s Senior Associates.

Alan has recently been appointed to the US Department of State's Bureau of Overseas Building Operations' (OBO) Industry Advisory Group for a two-year term. This group of experts ensures that the OBO adopts the building industry's latest concepts, methods, best practices, and ideas in providing facilities for the US government. Click here for the press release and access to the complete list of advisors.

Principal Alan Organschi has been appointed Director of the Innovation Lab at the newly formed Bauhaus der Erde (Bauhaus Earth) in Berlin, Germany. Launched in April 2021, 100 years after the founding of the original Bauhaus in Dessau, Bauhaus der Erde is a global interdisciplinary initiative. Its aim is the transformation of the building sector from an extractive economy with significant terrestrial impact to an ecologically regenerative metabolism that seeks to rebalance material and energy consumption and social inequity in the built environment.

More information about the Bauhaus der Erde can be found on its website here.

TimberCon 2021 will begin on March 18 with Alan's keynote address, "Building a Global Carbon Sink." The Architect's Newspaper recently spoke with Alan about his ongoing research on mass timber and the potential of bio-based building in new cityscapes. Read the full article here.

Spanning 7.5 miles between Cold Spring and Beacon, NY, the Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail is a new multi-modal linear park created by Scenic Hudson along the Hudson River. The trail, with landscape architecture by Scape and buildings and structures by Gray Organschi, will provide visitors with expansive views across the river, as well as access to the region's complex system of waterways, wetlands, highlands and forests. 

Lisa is one of five recipients of this year's Women in Architecture Awards by Architectural Record. According to the award's organizers, "the program recognizes and promotes women who demonstrate a commitment to excellence both in their work and in the world." Read the full press release here.

The article "Buildings as a Global Carbon Sink" has recently been published in Nature Sustainability. A collaboration between Alan Organschi, Andrew Ruff, and researchers at Yale University, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and Tsinghua University, the paper discusses the potential of using bio-based building materials to mitigate the effects of climate change. See this link to a blog post about the article, which is also mentioned in this CBC article. The original paper can be accessed on Nature Sustainabiliy here.

WT/GO Architecture has recently presented its concept design for the Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation at the University of Arkansas. The building will serve as the epicentre for the Fay Jones School of Architecture's multiple timber and wood initiatives as well as house the school's design-build program and digital fabrication laboratories. See the project page for more images and information about WT/GO's proposal. The final result of the competition will be announced in May 2020. 

Alan will join an international panel of architects to discuss the emerging role of mass timber in architectural design. See this link for more information on the event.

On this Hive RE:think podcast, Lisa discusses the Ecological Living Module as a model for affordable, secure, comfortable, and sustainable housing.

In a newly established partnership with Waugh Thistleton Architects, WT/GO was selected as one of six finalists to design the Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation at the University of Arkansas. WT/GO is thrilled that our combined commitment to sustainability as well as material and fabrication innovation was recognized by the campus review committee among almost 70 submissions. See the official press release here.

Alan will present on using mass timber and bio-based building assemblies in the construction of new cityscapes, turning the future city from a source of carbon emissions into a carbon storage system. See this link for more information on the event - we hope to see you on November 26.

Lisa and Alan will present and discuss the office's work at the Liljestrand House as part of the Foundation's Design Conversation Series. See this link for more information on the November 6 event.

The South Shore Little League community recently celebrated the opening of the Joseph A. Verdino Jr. Grandstand in Staten Island, NY. The new stadium, named in honor and memory of a young player in the league, now allows the SSLL to host tournaments in an inspiring and functional new setting. Visit the project page for more information and images.

Gray Organschi Architecture was recently selected to join the Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail design team. This linear park will connect Cold Spring to Beacon, NY and feature recreational and educational structures that encourage public engagement with and stewardship of this beautiful landscape.

Gray Organschi Architecture collaborated with the Yale Center for Ecosystems in Architecture to design, fabricate, and install the Ecological Living Module (ELM) for the United Nations Environment Programme. 

The 22-square meter home is constructed from renewable bio-based building materials and fully self-sufficient in terms of energy and water. The first demonstration unit, located in the UN Plaza in New York City, from July 9–August 23, contains features relevant to the local climate and context of New York. Future iterations of the module—including one in Kenya, the home of UN Environment—will respond specifically to local climatic and cultural contexts.

The 2018 USDA Forest Service Wood Innovation Grants have allocated $8 million to 34 projects brought forward by business, university, nonprofit, and tribal organizations in 20 states to stimulate the growth of wood-based technologies and markets. In addition to  increasing the health, efficiency, and resilience of US forests, projects were also selected for the use of wood products in innovative ways and promoting economic development in rural communities.

GOA and its partners have received three of these grants.

Principal Alan Organschi has been named as the 2019 Portman Visiting Critic at Georgia Institute of Technology School of Architecture. As Portman Critic, Alan will participate in the academic life of Georgia Tech as a visiting design studio critic and guest lecturer, as well as chair the jury for the Portman Prize, which recognizes student achievements in integrating technical detail considerations into the larger concepts and process of design. He will also contribute to the curriculum of the School's comprehensive building design workshop, sharing his experience at the intersections of architecture, site, detail, and building technology.