Construction of 1 De Haro, the first multi-story mass-timber structure in San Francisco has been completed by Perkins and Will. The 134,000 square foot light-manufacturing building and office stands at 58 feet high. While the structure is not the first of its kind in the country, it is the first in the Californian city. It won’t be the last however because the state has recently approved the tall wood provisions of the 2021 International Building Code (IBC). This allows mass timber buildings of up to 18 stories. The state is one of nine jurisdictions to adopt the standards so far.
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The San Francisco 1 De Haro building has a triangular shape and is wrapped in a glass curtain wall. It is comprised of three stories of exposed glulam columns and beams, and cross-laminated timber (CLT) floor slabs, on top of a concrete podium. According to the architects behind the project, this will result in about 15% fewer greenhouse emissions than a building made of concrete as a result of the structure’s embodied carbon. This however does not take into account the carbon sequestering properties of wood, the savings of which would be 51 percent, according to calculations from Perkins & Will’s.
There were time savings as well: the wood was harvested from northern Quebec in Forest Stewardship Council-certified forests. They were then fabricated into the required components, before being transported to the the city by rail. Because 1 De Haro was designed prior to the adoption of the new International Building Code wood standards, the architects had to work especially closely with manufacturers, consultants, and officials to satisfy engineering requirements, including those for fire and earthquakes. To address earthquakes, the frame includes steel buckling-restrained braces and to prevent fire outbreaks between the structure and the cladding, for instance, details were developed in collaboration with the local fire department.
