Denver’s tallest mass timber building will break ground in July 2023. Situated in the River North (RiNo) Arts District, the 12-storey building named “Return to Form” will be located at 3495 Wynkoop Street.
 
“The recent development of mass timber construction allows us—for the first time in history—to design high-rise building structures out of a renewable resource: trees,” said Michael Moore, founder and design principal of Tres Birds. “This new fire-resistant building material is renewable, hence healthy for the planet. Trees utilize carbon to make oxygen, and vegetation cools the earth. Concrete – and the fossil fuels used to make and transport it – create more carbon that adds to global warming. We need to be building all of our buildings out of renewable resources and manage those resources well.”
 
Tres Birds and the development team won the 2022 Mass Timber Competition: Building to Net-Zero this summer for the “Return to Form” project. The $2,000,000 prize will be shared by six winning projects and is sponsored by the Softwood Lumber Board (SLB) and USDA Forest Service (USDA). The project team includes Katz Development, Timberlab, ARUP, and KL&A Engineers and Builders.
 
Tres Birds works with every client to minimize the carbon footprint of all the projects they take on.  The architecture firm is known for unique residential developments in Denver including Lumina and S*PARK.

The mass timber will be made from Douglas fir from the Pacific Northwest and will be designed so that walls and ceilings are exposed wood. Large windows will slide open. Only a small percentage of the building will be made with concrete including the foundation, stairs, and elevator core.
 
“The bottom line is building with wood, rather than concrete or steel, produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions,” notes Moore.