June 2025

The SLB Generated 315 MM BF of Incremental Demand in Q1

The SLB recently published its Q1 Report, highlighting its accelerating efforts to grow demand and expand markets for lumber in 2025. The SLB is focused on capturing market share in high-potential segments like K–12 schools and multifamily housing while pushing beyond early adopters of wood construction to engage general contractors, developers, and community stakeholders through targeted training, education, media partnerships, and project competitions nationwide.

Key Q1 highlights:

• SLB Education’s faculty development initiative is proving to be a powerful driver of wood design education, with a survey finding that 61% of engaged faculty have already added new curriculum, and another 17% plan to within a year. 
• A new Think Wood video promotes wood solutions for education building construction, a sector with an estimated 1.5 BBF of annual incremental lumber potential by 2035.
• WoodWorks continues to expand the possibilities for light-frame construction with 5,445 professionals receiving light-frame education and 26 new project leads in Q1 alone, representing an estimated potential of 38 MM BF of lumber.
• The American Wood Council moved quickly to defeat an aggressive proposal by the concrete and masonry industry and supported by the steel industry to roll back the allowance for 100% exposed mass timber ceilings in Type IV-B buildings introduced in the 2024 IBC.
• The SLB and USDA Forest Service’s 2025 Mass Timber Competition: Building Sustainable Schools has drawn innovative project entries from across the country, signaling growing momentum for mass timber in the K–12 education sector.

For more detail, comprehensive program updates, and additional SLB news, view the Q1 2025 Report below. We always welcome industry feedback, which can be sent to info@softwoodlumberboard.org.

The SLB Expands Accelerator Initiative

In 2025, the SLB is expanding its accelerator program initiative to drive innovation in wood construction with a focus on affordability and housing access. Building on the success of programs in Boston, Georgia, and New York City—launched in partnership with the USDA Forest Service—the SLB is now exploring collaborations with cities in Colorado, Pennsylvania, Oregon, California, and in Washington, D.C.

In New York, two projects from the NYC Economic Development Corporation’s 2024 Mass Timber Studio have moved toward construction: the Walter Gladwin Recreation Center and a Brooklyn Public Library branch, both expected to break ground this year. A second round of applications for the program closed in April, and the SLB and program partners have reviewed and selected finalists. One of the finalists has been selected to construct 500 new mixed-income housing units on Staten Island, becoming one of the largest mass timber residential development projects with affordable housing in the entire country.

Georgia’s Mass Timber Accelerator, managed by the Georgia Forestry Foundation, is providing direct funding and technical support to three active projects. The accelerator launched a new call for applications and is expanding into key urban centers through its Mass Timber Hubs initiative. These educational hubs in cities throughout Georgia, developed in partnership with WoodWorks, aim to engage local design and construction professionals to share success stories, discuss lessons learned, and grow momentum ahead of the June 30 application deadline.

Our latest SLB Insights article takes a deeper look at the impact of the accelerator initiative and the SLB’s work to expand that impact and support the growth of wood construction nationwide.

Former Chair Highlights the SLB’s Role in Driving Innovation

The coming years are critical to the lumber industry’s efforts to increase market share and grow demand. The lumber industry has made incredible progress on codes and standards and in the market share for wood construction—but without continuing our investment, we’ll lose the gains we’ve made.

Throughout the year, we’ll be highlighting leaders in the industry, SLB programs, and SLB partners to illustrate how and why the softwood lumber industry is working collectively to ensure we continue to grow market share. This month, SLB Chair Emeritus Marc Brinkmeyer, Owner of Idaho Forest Group, highlights how the SLB and its funded programs can spur innovation to drive lumber demand.

“It’s through the Softwood Lumber Board that we’ve had the opportunity to have a combined marketing effort of all of our species from a building component perspective,” Brinkmeyer says in the video. “The cost of building is still too high. As we look at what automation, creativity, and AI will be able to bring us in the future, all of those things can manifest themselves through the SLB, the AWC, WoodWorks, Think Wood, and our Education arm. The Softwood Lumber Board is our future.”

Think Wood Case Study Highlights Light-Frame’s Flexibility and Value

A recent Think Wood case study features Africatown Plaza, a seven-story, 126-unit affordable housing project built with light-frame construction. The case study highlights both the value and versatility of light-frame structural systems, noting that the budget-friendly material choice allowed the developer to deploy funds elsewhere, such as with higher-end finishes or to create social spaces that were coveted by the community.

“Generally speaking, wood frame construction is the least expensive,” said Daniel Simons, Principal of David Baker Architects, which designed the building with architect of record GGLO for the Africatown Community Land Trust. “If we can do a five-story wood frame building on grade or over one [story of concrete], it’s the value leader; it usually ends up being what we end up doing.”

Affordable housing was a bright spot for the slow market for apartment starts in 2024. The segment represents a significant opportunity to increase demand for lumber-based products and building systems, with estimates of the housing shortage ranging from 1.5 million units to 7.3 million homes. Think Wood’s storytelling in this segment helps architects and developers learn how wood structural systems can offer cost-effective and timely solutions for affordable housing developers and practitioners, leading to increased specification of wood.

UC San Diego Engineers Create Lasting Memories in Timber Design Course

Architecture students have multiple opportunities to explore wood’s potential through SLB-backed design competitions and studio sponsorships, but reaching engineering programs—with their heavy course load and theory-focused curricula—has proven more challenging. That gap narrowed this spring when the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego debuted “Advanced Timber Design,” a master’s-level course made possible by SLB funding. The school published a story featuring the course in its online magazine this month.

Over a fast-paced semester, 23 students studied light-frame and mass timber design and competed in a design-build challenge. Working in six teams, they conceived, designed, and fabricated wood structures engineered to support at least 1,000 pounds. Load testing became a spectacle: buckets of sand were added in 50-pound increments while classmates cheered, and awards recognized innovation, efficiency, and engineering excellence. The exercise blended structural analysis with hands-on fabrication, project management, and circular-economy thinking. Following the load test, students deconstructed the spans and upcycled every piece of lumber into bookshelves, standing desks, and other take-home items. “With graduation only three months away, it’s projects like these that not only provide a great opportunity to develop practical skills but also create lasting memories,” said UCSD student Ethan Adamson.

Professor Alessandro Palermo credits the competition format for accelerating learning: “Students learn to appreciate and adapt to field conditions in real time,” he notes, adding that the collaborative setting sharpened soft skills prized by employers. Moreover, seeing modest 1-by-2 strapping and a handful of screws safely span eight feet rewired students’ intuition about wood’s strength and versatility at larger scales. Each of these 23 soon-to-be graduates now enters the workforce with hands-on wood experience—a multiplier that advances the SLB’s mission to embed wood expertise across the design and construction professions.

Building on this momentum, the SLB and UCSD are planning a regional design-build showdown for 2026, inviting peer engineering schools to compete under a common brief. The scalable model promises to turn tomorrow’s engineers into confident champions for wood.

AWC’s State-Level Code Work Protects Lumber Use in Colorado and Georgia

The AWC’s efforts to ensure building codes and standards are friendly to wood occurs not only on the national level, but also on the state level.

In Colorado, the AWC has been actively involved with the Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code Board as it drafts the Colorado State Wildfire Resiliency Code. The initial draft code was reviewed by the AWC and its Wildland Interface Task Group, which found several potential issues. The draft used the International Code Council’s (ICC) Wildland-Urban Interface Code as a template. However, the draft deviated from the ICC code in terminology and made organizational changes. With the task group’s guidance, the AWC submitted comments on the initial draft that address these issues as well as several other issues important to the U.S. wood product industry, including defensible space, protection of material options, and recognition of performance criteria similar to those in California Building Code Chapter 7A. The AWC will be participating in the next public hearing on June 27. 

In Georgia, the AWC engaged on a proposed amendment that could have unnecessarily restricted the allowable number of stories for Type IV mass timber buildings. The AWC successfully defeated the proposal. The proposed amendment, related to specific Institutional Occupancies, attempted to equate the new mass timber construction types—Types IV-A, IV-B, and IV-C—with legacy heavy timber construction, thereby subjecting them to the same height and story limitations. Proponents of the amendment incorrectly claimed that these new mass timber construction types were not recognized by National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards, despite their inclusion in both NFPA’s and ICC’s International Building Code model codes. The amendment would have potentially undermined the proven fire-resistance characteristics of the new mass timber construction types. The AWC’s successful opposition preserved the separate and unique code provisions established for mass timber. 

The AWC’s field staff and code and standard experts continue to engage and defend access to and fair treatment of wood products in code development and adoption at the state and jurisdiction level.

WoodWorks Award Program Drives Scale; Winners Announced at AIA

When WoodWorks announced the winners of its 2025 Wood in Architecture (WiA) awards at this month’s national AIA Conference on Architecture, attendees were eager to see which teams won for which projects. But the awards are much more than beautiful wood buildings (though they are that too). 

The award program is part of a strategy to drive scale, contributing to a circle of influence where WoodWorks supports individuals new to wood who become experts that go on to inspire and influence others through exemplary wood projects. WoodWorks promotes the winners widely. The awards also help ensure continued expansion of the WoodWorks Innovation Network (WIN) with quality projects and support the WoodWorks goal of being nimble, aware of both design trends and potential issues. The relationships established with nominated teams are also invaluable, resulting in everything from project leads—many experienced architecture, engineering, and construction professionals have suggested that peers new to wood should contact WoodWorks—to opportunities for tours, where winning teams directly educate others with less experience.

The nine winning projects showcase wood in a range of building types and regions across the United States, from a multifamily Passive House development with a mass timber/light-frame hybrid system in Massachusetts to a specialized learning environment at Washington’s only American Sign Language–English bilingual school.  

“Each project tells a story about innovation and a shared commitment to excellence,” said WoodWorks CEO Jennifer Cover in a press release. “Whether for work, research, learning, or home, these buildings showcase wood as a resilient and flexible material in applications that designers can repeat and build upon.”  

WoodWorks and the AWC Team Up to Appeal Rejected Light-Frame Plan

Each month, the SLB features a new wood project resulting from the programs it funds. This month highlights an adaptive reuse project where WoodWorks teamed up with the AWC to appeal a plan review board decision that would have had a major negative impact on light-frame construction in Portland, Maine.

WoodWorks’ relationships with project teams, combined with the AWC’s expertise and respect from building officials, can help overcome thorny issues with local approvals. That was the case for a 10,528-square-foot adaptive reuse project in Portland, Maine, where Archetype Architects had its design rejected by the plan review board.

In the board’s interpretation of the code, all joists and rafters needed to be encased in gypsum or other fire-retardant material. Not only is this different from the common interpretation, but it is also not the case in fire-tested assemblies for these projects. In combination with other fire-protection strategies, these assemblies already achieve the required fire-resistance ratings, meeting the code’s life safety requirements without the added cost of encasement. As the architect noted, this requirement could “spell the end of Type V-A construction” in their jurisdiction—one of the most widely used construction types for light-frame wood.

A WoodWorks Regional Director worked with the AWC to engage the local code official and make the case for a revised interpretation. The information was effective, and the board gave its approval. New elements in this project include the light-frame wood floor system and internal walls. While relatively small, it is significant for the precedent it sets for Type V-A buildings in Portland, Maine, and it will use 14 bf/sq. ft.

“WoodWorks’ support helped avoid a significant cost increase of the construction and allowed us to maintain the design integrity of our project,” said Maryna Nelson, an Architectural Designer at Archetype Architects. “Their insights and code interpretation were valuable in the discussions with the review board.”