This small industrial constructing in Portland, Oregon, designed by Performs Partnership Architecture has an engineered timber frame that is visible behind a glass curtain wall (+ slideshow).
The structure, named Frame Function, contains a concrete base with the upper 4 floors framed in glue-laminated beams, and diagonally laid tongue-and-groove floors and ceilings.
The concrete base includes a garage, retail room, and a lobby for the upper floors. For the architects, the heaviness of the base in contrast with the lightness of the framework over celebrates the inherent qualities of the components.
“On 1 degree it is a balance among the ephemeral and the tangible, on the other it is merely a compositional shortened palette of simple and self-evident supplies,” Performs Partnership Architecture principals Bill Neburka and Carrie Strickland told Dezeen. “Our inversion of the variety was the analogy of a ship in a bottle.”
Related story: HawkinsBrown pairs cross-laminated timber and steel for record-breaking apartment block
“Historically the variety is comprised of thick masonry perimeter walls with comparatively modest apertures,” they additional. “Inherent in the architecture of adapting the sort is how mass is portrayed. We desired to allude to this contrast by how the base is constructed, exaggerating the mass, but constructing it of straightforward wooden boards.”
The transparent upper floors will also let the activities going on in the offices to be visible to the street. Operable windows are integrated to decrease cooling charges in the city’s mild climate. The upper floors will be rented to multiple workplace tenants.
However the task makes use of engineered timber, it draws on the city’s business and industrial vernacular created from all-natural wood.
“In collaboration with the client, we wished to develop a business workspace building that was a direct extension of the historic timber frame industrial structures that dot the east side of Portland,” Neburka and Strickland explained.
“Some of the earliest tasks WPA began its practice with have been the adaptation of these historic structures, so we enjoyed the possibility to conceptually adapt the topology,” they said.
Wood is taking above from steel and concrete as the architectural wonder materials of the 21st century, with architects praising its sustainability, quality and velocity of building.
Examples of other tasks developed from engineered timber incorporate a Chicago pavilion with an expansive self-supporting roof and a higher-rise apartment creating that won this year’s prestigious Finlandia Prize for Architecture.
Ground floor plan – click for bigger picture 
1st floor prepare – click for larger image 
Area – click for larger picture 
