Binderholz
Sustainable Solid Wood Construction
INTRO Apartments in Cleveland, Ohio, is the largest solid wood building in the United States.
PHOTO: BINDERHOLZ, HARATSHORNE PLUNKARD ARCHITECTURE
Binderholz is a family-owned and -managed company that provides wood as a building material. The company was founded in 1950 in Fügen in Tirol and grew from a small sawmill operation to a leading company that employs some 5,000 people in twenty-eight international sites. Binderholz specializes in solid timber products and construction solutions in applications ranging from single-family homes to residential buildings, and also public and industrial buildings. The company has been active in the United States, where it maintains three sites—a sawmill in Enflied, NC, a sales department in Atlanta, GA, and a sawmill in Live Oak, FL.
In 2018, Binderholz constructed a new student dorm at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Adohi Hall, offering space for more than 700 students on some 2,152,782 sq. ft. The project was carried out in cooperation with architects and designers at Leers Weinzapfel Associates, Modus Studio, Mackey Mitchell Architects and OLIN in collaboration with the general contractor Nabholz. In addition to dormitories, the two-part building complex also incorporates learning- and research rooms, communal spaces, as well as shopping and dining facilities. The project was awarded a prize at the AIA St. Louis Design Award 2019.
In 2021, Binderholz was awarded the Global EcoVision Award (Gold) for its INTRO project by the Austrian Economic Chambers, which recognizes companies that push economic upswing through their international activities. The Global Eco Vision Award recognizes companies that contribute to a sustainable environmental and climate protection with its innovative technologies, products and services.
The INTRO apartment building in Cleveland, OH, is a nine story building with 299 apartments and an integrated shopping center. It is the largest solid wood project in the United States. The wood used in the €130 million project originates from sustainable forest management and was transported to site by ship via the St. Lawrence River and the Port of Cleveland.
Despite the substantial shipping costs, the price through Binderholz was lower than the market price in America, where the industry is younger and less efficient, according to reporting by Steven Litt at Cleveland.com. In fact, the construction technology behind the Cleveland INTRO apartment complex is relatively new in the United States and first met U.S. building code requirements in 2015. Mass timber, as the technology is called in the United States, or “Holzmassivbauweise” as the national guidelines are referred to in Austria, was actually pioneered in Austria in the early 1990s. It encompasses a variety of related technologies such as LVL (laminated veneer lumber), DLT (dowel-laminated timber), and nail-laminated timber (NLT). But CLT (cross-laminated timber) is the most common and has opened up the most new architectural possibilities. It has been championed by Gerhard Schickhofer, Professor and Director of the Institute of Timber Engineering and Wood Technology at the Graz University of Technology, who wrote his 1994 PhD thesis on the topic and who won a prestigious forestry prize in 2019 for his work to standardize and secure popular support for the construction technique.
Binderholz is already the market leader in CLT production in Europe, according to a 2019 UNECE report. With its two recently acquired sawmills in North Carolina and Florida, Binderholz is now the largest European sawn timber producer and is making significant investments and contributions to the quickly growing CLT industry in the United States.
For more information, visit
https://www.binderholz.com