Mass timber has become the material of choice for libraries, schools and cultural buildings. It is starting to appear somewhere less expected: the industrial park. Not in the racking halls — steel still does that best — but in the parts of industrial buildings where people spend their days.
Where timber works
Office blocks, staff amenities, training centres and rooftop additions are a natural fit. Spans are moderate, loads are predictable, and the warmth of exposed timber changes how people feel about arriving at a distribution centre at six in the morning.
Light enough to build on top
At Canal Works, a timber structure let us add a full storey of workspace on top of a 1920s brick factory without strengthening the existing foundations. A steel or concrete addition of the same size would have meant months of structural work below.
“The lightest structure on site was also the one with the lowest carbon and the shortest programme.”
Fig. 02 — Timber bridges across the atrium, Lakeshore Innovation Centre
Fire, moisture and insurance
The questions we hear most are practical. Encapsulation and charring rates are well understood by code officials; moisture is managed by protecting the timber during construction and measuring it before the building is closed in. Insurers increasingly treat mass timber like any other engineered structure when the details are right.
A hybrid future
We expect the typical industrial building of the next decade to be a hybrid: steel or concrete where loads and spans demand it, timber where people work. Choosing each material for what it does best is not a compromise. It is good architecture.