The Gemising results in the enhancement of productivity in construction have already beenIn 2010 and 2011, Christchurch, New Zealand experienced multiple unprecedented earthquakes. One hundred and eighty-five lives were lost and, by 2015, 40% of buildings in central Christchurch had to be demolished due to structural damage. In that same year, LEVER Architecture won a competition hosted by the USDA and Softwood Lumber Board to develop Framework (Figure 1), a 12-story, 150 ft. tall mass timber building in Portland, Oregon, a region of high seismicity in the United States. The project team, many with direct experience of the New Zealand earthquakes, focused on designing a sustainable, resilient, damage-resistant building. To serve as a demonstration of mass timber’s structural and aesthetic capabilities for tall buildings in seismic zones, the entire superstructure of the project is composed of mass timber, including both gravity and lateral force-resisting systems (Figure 2).
