Minneapolis' office building of the future will be made of, uh, wood?

When the Hines development company unveiled plans for anew office building in the North Loop section of Minneapolislast November, they received the requisite amount of coverage, even a write-up in the Wall Street Journal.

But given the frequency of construction announcements in the midst of downtown's boomlet, the significance of what its builders call T3 got a bit lost. Too bad, because if the seven-story, 210,000 square foot office building is completed, it will not only be one of just a handful of tall buildings in the world made primarily of woodit will be the first such building in the United States.

Pretty bold for a buildingbeing advanced without a tenant.During a presentation on T3 (forTimber, Technology and Transit) before the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission earlier this month, Hines director of development, Robert Pfefferle, said the company is still talking to prospective clients about occupying the building. There wouldn't seem to be a shortage of interest: the site for T3 is surface parking behind the Dock Street Flats at 333 Washington Avenue N., a trapezoidal parcel that abuts the I-94 ramps from 3rd Street N. and the Cedar Lake Trail.There is a suburban-to-urban migration that is happening on a national basis and the North Loop is an attractor for these knowledge workers, tech workers, Pfefferle said.

Beyond the name that tries to connect with younger workers and entrepreneurs, beyond the modern graphics, T3's novel building materials have the potential to make it an it building both regionally and nationally.Perhaps that is why Houston-based Hines is willing to take a chance on what is an intriguing but still uncertain technology.

Pfefferle fended off a request to talk further about the project until spring, and lead architect Michael Green of Vancouver didnt respond to calls and emails. But he has done plenty of talking in the past, especially about his ideas regarding wood, as both a building technology and a response to climate change.

Indeed, the proposed design isnt simply a concrete and steel building with lots of wood trim and accents. It is fundamentally different a building made of wood. And those who are expecting a 21st century version of the structures that remain dominant in the Warehouse District will be disappointed or surprised. Those massive, old-growth timbers used a 100 years ago (think the interior of Butler Square) arent much available anymore. Instead, the material to be used in T3 is modern, what architect Green calls new-technology wood or Mass Timber construction.

This building is very unique, Green told the commission. It is the first large-scale office building built of timber in America. It is part of a revitalization of century old ideas of how to build buildings. At a TED talk in 2013, Green spoke about of the magic of wood: Ive never seen anyone walk into one of my buildings and hug a steel or concrete column. But Ive actually seen that happen in wood buildings.

2013 TED Talk of Michael Green discussing why we should build wooden skyscrapers.

Noteverything in the building will be made of wood; the foundation and first story will be concrete and steel. But both the elevator core and the floor plates are assembled from solid columns and panels of engineered lumber. The panels vary in size but can be made as large as eight feet by 64 feet and as thick as a few inches up to 16 inches. Built elsewhere and trucked to building sites, the panels can be assembled more quickly than traditional steel and concrete buildings. One description of the process is familiar to anyone who has assembled IKEA furniture: Flatpack.

Ultimately these are very large, very dense solid panels of wood, Green wrote in his manifesto, The Case for Tall Wood Buildings. [PDF] Cross Laminated Timber is made from laminated layers of milled lumber set at 90 degree angles, Laminated Strand Lumber is made from a matrix of thin wood chips and Laminated Veneer Lumber is made from thin laminations of wood, similar to plywood but on a much larger scale, Green noted.

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Minneapolis' office building of the future will be made of, uh, wood?