Behind the Scenes: A Shared Vision for A Residential Mass Timber Build

Simpson Strong-Tie proudly features its mass timber products in the innovative residential project by TimberBLDR and Risinger Build. TimberBLDR discusses the selection process that resulted in choosing the Simpson Strong-Tie critical connection hardware. Gain insights into how our engineering team played a crucial role in designing and overcoming challenges for this groundbreaking mass timber project. 

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From NHERI TallWood to Converging Design: Building Towards Resilient Structures

Simpson Strong-Tie is participating in NHERI Converging Design, the third phase of testing a six-story mass timber building on the NHERI UCSD shake table. This project follows up on the testing of a ten-story mass timber building with the NHERI TallWood project. Our Yield-Link® moment connection and Yield-Link brace connection underwent testing as potential alternatives to post-tensioned rocking wall systems, aiming to decrease the potential for residual drift. Learn more about this project and our live testing event. 

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The Future of Building: Exploring Offsite and Modular Approaches

Explore offsite and modular construction methods with Adrian Mitchell, Offsite Construction Business Specialist at Simpson Strong-Tie. Learn how these methods can address housing shortages and help engineer a more efficient and sustainable future.

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From Our CEO: Simpson Strong-Tie — A Strong Culture

Mike Olosky is the Chief Executive Officer at Simpson Strong-Tie as of January 1, 2023. Before that, Mike served for two years as the company’s Chief Operating Officer. In what follows, he discusses some of the characteristics that define the  Simpson Strong-Tie culture and make it stand out.

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Shaking Up Architecture: Putting Mass Timber Construction to the Seismic Test

As a lead industry supporter and research partner of the National Science Foundation-funded NHERI TallWood test, Simpson Strong-Tie is proud to participate in this groundbreaking initiative to investigate the resilience of tall timber buildings in earthquake-prone regions.

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What You Should Know About Mass Timber Construction

Over the last decade — in outlets reaching from construction industry journals to the Boston Globe and the Economist; from CNN and Fast Company to Popular Mechanics; to Nautilus and TED talks — we’ve been hearing increasingly about mass timber and related phenomena: “CLT,” big wood, tall wood, tall timber, timber towers, ply-rises, plyscrapers, ply in the sky, super-ply, Brobdingnagian boards, and all manner of engineered arboreal futures.

So what’s the huge deal about mass timber? What on earth’s so good about wood? Is CLT the new CBD (for builders, that is)? Can ply really get that high? Is this just a big buncha buzz, or is something more solid behind it?

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Cross-Laminated Timber Takes Wood Construction to Greater Heights Than Ever Before

Cross-laminated timber (CLT) is changing the way urban builders scrape the sky.

From London to Tokyo, the race is on to build the tallest wood-framed skyscraper in the world. Prized for its workability, low cost and visual aesthetics, wood was widely used by urban builders until the early 20th century, when fires triggered by the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake leveled the largely stick-built city. Until recently, the other knock on wood was a vertical one, in that stick-framed buildings generally top out at five stories, owing to the accumulation of dead and live loads in excess of the allowable loads for lumber.
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