June 26, 2024

UW's Founders Hall wins Wood in Architecture Award

Photo by Tim Griffith [enlarge]

Founders Hall has a signature central stairway built with mass timber.

Founders Hall at the University of Washington has been honored by WoodWorks with a 2024 Wood in Architecture Award. For more than a decade, these awards have recognized excellence in mass timber, light-frame wood, and hybrid building design.

Founders Hall is a hybrid-mass timber building at UW's Seattle campus and the new home for the Foster School of Business. It opened in fall 2022 and was the first building to employ mass timber on the campus.

The mass timber portion of Founders Hall comprises a glue-laminated timber (glulam) post and beam structure with cross-laminated timber (CLT) decking. Non-wood elements are built with concrete and steel and make up the building's large assembly spaces.

The structure's mass timber framing is exposed throughout the interior and a striking mass timber stairway ties the building's spaces together and creates a unique gathering place for students and staff.

LMN Architects designed Founders Hall. It was built by Hoffman Construction Company.

A total of seven projects won a 2024 Wood in Architecture Award. These include an office building in California that utilizes a nearly all-mass timber frame in a high-seismic area, a temporary outdoor structure in Washington, D.C. that signifies environmental justice, and a seven-story multi-family project in Massachusetts.

“In schools, offices, and community gathering spaces, this year's winning projects exemplify wood's undeniably positive influence in modern design,” Jennifer Cover, president and CEO of WoodWorks, shared in a press release.

The full list of winning projects is at https://www.woodworks.org/2024-wood-in-architecture-awards/

WoodWorks is a non-profit with services that include free project support for commercial and multi-family wood buildings, a robust nationwide education program, and a wide range of published resources.