SUSAN JONES WINS AIA SEATTLE GOLD MEDAL

atelierjones founder and principal Susan Jones was awarded the 2024 AIA Seattle Gold Medal, recognizing distinguished lifetime achievement in architecture, including design and professional practice and service to the profession, the community, education and the arts.

RISING FROM THE ASHES | SIERRA INSTITUTE HOMES

NBC Bay Area News came to visit our local home owner, Ken Donell and feature the Greenville, California community’s amazingly resilient response to the Dixie Fire devastation which occurred just two years ago, destroying over 1,000 structures in the small town in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Today, three houses are just weeks away from move-in. As Jennifer Gray Thompson of the Bay Area fire response group After The Fire says in the coverage, “They’re very creative, they’re very innovative…to see this amazing wildfire resistant, really climate resistant [house] go up here, really the most impressive example I’ve seen in six years of doing this work.” atelierjones is so honored to be working with the Sierra Institute for Community and Environment and Mass Timber Strategy on this important project.

Roundhouse to Begin Construction

The Maidu Roundhouse Cultural Center is moving forward with funding towards a late summer start for construction! Thank you to the incredible effort from the Sierra Institute and the willpower of the Roundhouse members to secure the funding needed to push the project forward from design into construction. atelierjones is expecting the permit in August and is working closely with Vaagen Timbers to approve the shop drawings. The builders will begin with groundwork on the site this month. This major step forward for Roundhouse exemplifies the resilience of the community around shared purpose: environmental and cultural justice. We are thrilled and honored to work with the Maidu and additional partners on this project.

The Architect's Newspaper's Best Firm (small) in the West - 2023

We are so excited to share that The Architect’s Newspaper has awarded atelierjones Best Architecture Firm (small) in the West alongside national leaders in design practices across the US for 2023. The Architect’s Magazine acknowledged that beyond the design merit of individual projects, how do you recognize excellence in the overall impact and values of a firm? Executive Editor Jack Murphy explains how atelierjones stands out: “Susan Jones’s leadership surrounding mass timber in Seattle is remarkable. Her work to introduce the technology into the ICC building code set the stage for the growing popularity of this structural system today. This is a major accomplishment!” We celebrate the award for our mighty and nimble team that beautifully executes fine details on large and small projects and has had enormous national impact introducing lower carbon design at scale to the United States!

Sierra Nevada Modular Mass Timber Homes featured

atelierjones’ mass timber, fire-hardened modular houses are just finishing up construction in Greenville, CA, and Architectural Record took careful note and published this wonderful article describing the homes, but more, the complexity and nuances of rebuilding resiliently in a remote, rural post-fire environment, using regional wood and local resources as possible. Thank you!

HEARTWOOD TOPS OUT

Construction on Heartwood’s superstructure is completed, marking a huge milestone for Washington’s tallest timber building! The final CLT panels were craned into place on December 9, 2022, with roofing soon to follow. Thanks to the building’s innovative mass timber system, years of intense trade coordination, and a hardworking on-site team, the structure has been completed in just eight short months.

HEARTWOOD CLT PANELS ARRIVE ON SITE

The first shipment of CLT panels have arrived at our Community Roots Housing Heartwood construction site in Capitol Hill as of August 25, 2022. CLT Panels made by Kalesnikoff are currently being craned into place and positioned precisely over the glulam columns and beams engineered by DCI Engineers, fabricated by DR Johnson and Mass Plywood Panel stairs by Freres Lumber, all post-processed by TimberLab. Click here to see live aerial updates, thanks to our contractor, Swinerton Builders. What a great team!

TIMBERLAB VISIT

atelierjones visited Timberlab in Portland, OR, where they saw Mass Timber prefabricated elements undergoing production for our Heartwood workforce 126-unit workforce residential building. On display were the Freres produced mass plywood panel (MPP) Exit Stairs going through post-processing at Timberlab, and a mockup of Heartwood’s innovative all-wood beam to column connection.

SIERRA INSTITUTE SAWMILL RIBBON CUTTING

On May 18, 2022, atelierjones visited Greenville, CA, where four of their mass timber homes will be erected in the fall to help rebuild the town after it was devastated in the Dixie Fire of 2021. They also participated in the Sierra Institute’s ribbon cutting ceremony for a new sawmill on their wood utilization campus. The mill will bring jobs back to the area, provide local lumber to help rebuild the town of Greenville, and salvage charred ponderosa pines.

HEARTWOOD IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION

atelierjones’ mass timber middle-income housing project, Heartwood, officially started construction as of April 4, 2022. The eight-story, mass timber Heartwood is one of 15 Tall Wood Buildings (defined as 8 stories or over) either under construction or completed in North America. It is the first Type IV-C building under construction in the US. Construction is scheduled for completion in March 2023

CONSTITUTION SHED wins AIASeattle award!

A small off-grid restored SHED used to support forest restoration on a remote island mountaintop, Constitution SHED layers built reflections of site, ecologies, memory and legacy. The simple, utilitarian SHED, located high on a remote mountaintop on a Pacific Northwest island, had lost its functional purpose as a support structure for a large water tank, and its strong proportions had been slowly decaying for decades. The grandfather of the owner/architect had built the SHED, as a protection against fires high on the then nearly inaccessible mountain. Upon refinding the SHED, decades later, during intense forest restoration efforts of the long-neglected mountain island forest, the owner/architect had the SHED relocated to a island local workshop, to restore the stalwart proportions and the 80 year old Douglas Fir boards that had once been milled on site

INNOVATION IN ARCHITECTURE AWARD from WAN

Thrilled to be recognized internationally for our innovative work with mass timber, from our small house to our current 8-story mass timber housing project, and of course, helping to lower the construction industry's carbon footprint through new codes, fire/lifesafety, and lower carbon construction at scale. Thank you to all our valued atelierjones colleagues and national collaborators!

INNOVATION IN ARCHITECTURE AWARD FINALIST - WORLD ARCHITECTURE NEWS

Thrilled to announce the World Architecture News (WAN) Finalist in the Innovation in Architecture Award category for their FEMALE FRONTIER AWARDS for atelierjones founder, Susan Jones, FAIA. The Award material states: “Her prolific work over the last nine years has advanced and restructured the carbon-intensive construction industry towards adopting lower carbon materials by using design as a catalyst creating sustainable change at scale. She is an exemplary role model for architects, demonstrating how design can lead innovation at all scales, to urgently lower our carbon footprint in our fight against climate change.” World Architecture News | Innovation in Architecture Finalist 2021. Thank you WAN!

MASS TIMBER HOUSING GEEKS

Yep. That’s us. atelierjones is geeking out over here. Today we found out that we are using almost three times the amount of sustainably-harvested Pacific Northwest wood than concrete for our 8-story middle income housing project in central Seattle. We’re excited to be planning a project that houses 126 folks with such a light impact on our environment! See more at our material takeoffs detail under Mass Timber Middle Income Housing project.

MASS TIMBER EIGHT-STORY HOUSING ANNOUNCED FOR CAPITOL HILL

atelierjones is leading a vertically integrated team to design and build a 61,000 SF middle income housing project in the heart of Capitol Hill. The project is being designed to use a mass timber structural system, from locally sourced, sustainably harvested timber. The eight-story, 114-unit project will utilize the new Type IVC building codes, which our founder, Susan Jones, helped to craft as part of the ICC Tall Wood Building Committee from 2016-2019.