4 November 2025
We’re bringing our mockup of Ronald McDonald House Willow to Woodrise in just a couple weeks.
The 12-story all-wood tower, designed by MGA | Michael Green Architecture, features a first-of-its-kind lateral system utilizing coupled CLT shear walls linked with steel beams that are placed around the elevator and stair shafts of the tower to create a “core-wall” system. This system was conceptualized by several StructureCraft engineers (Ben Moerman, Justin Brown, Wenchen Dong) during their PhD work at the University of Canterbury, and we are excited to now implement it on a real site.
These elements are built at scale in this mockup. Each face of the CLT walls showcases a story – the structural details CNC’d into black paint, and the architectural story CNC’d into the raw Douglas Fir CLT.
WoodWorks Issue – 04 Nov 2025
Welcome
Greetings from your WoodWorks team. Why can’t we build New Zealand hospitals like this? The Cowichan District Hospital Replacement Project in Duncan, B.C., is setting a precedent for the use of mass timber in healthcare facilities. We are currently running the WoodWorks Conference, 4-5 November in Rotorua. We look forward to seeing many of our current WoodWorks.news subscribers there. Other stories in this issue:
- A recent New Zealand mass timber building in Lincoln makes the shortlist for international award from ‘Built-by-Nature’.
- The new Ronald McDonald House Willow at Woodrise, which is going to be a cool 12-story all-wood tower with some unique design features.
- Are we there yet? Well, it’s a journey rather than a destination, but the most recent ‘good sign’ for mass timber becoming mainstream is the plans by Amazon with a new warehouse/dispatch facility in Indiana, USA.
4 November 2025
Why can’t we build New Zealand’s new hospitals like this
The Cowichan District Hospital Replacement Project in Duncan, BC, is setting a precedent for the use of mass timber in healthcare facilities. At 607,601 sq. ft. and seven storeys tall,...
4 November 2025
New Zealand mass timber building in Lincoln
Who are they? (you might ask): Built by Nature is a European-based sustainability promotion network supporting pioneering developers, architects and engineers, asset owners and managers, investors and insurers, city leaders,...
4 November 2025
New Ronald McDonald house
We’re bringing our mockup of Ronald McDonald House Willow to Woodrise in just a couple weeks. The 12-story all-wood tower, designed by MGA | Michael Green Architecture, features a first-of-its-kind...
4 November 2025
Amazon goes with mass timber for Indiana delivery centre
Inside the delivery station putting dozens of sustainability strategies to the test Step inside our newest tool for finding ways to shrink our carbon footprint and reduce our resource usage....
4 November 2025
Baseball heaven
There were two old guys, Abe and Sol, sitting on a bench in a park feeding pigeons and talking about baseball, just like they did every day. Abe turns to...