Between the Middle Santiam Wilderness and Salem, Ore., there is a family-owned lumber company, Freres Lumber, doing its best to bring new wrinkles to old-school techniques: it recently invested $35 million for a new facility to produce mass plywood panels and employs what it says is one of the 10 largest computer-numerical-controlled routing and milling machines in the world.
The company is ready for a lot of work. Freres Lumber executive Rob Freres figures a federal code change late last year could open 85% of new commercial and large-scale projects to using mass plywood panels as a primary construction material. The investment, and the firm’s efforts in develop lighter-weight mass plywood panels for use in prefab or just-in-time delivery roles on project sites, reflect renewed interest in using wood as a primary building material in new ways: from mixed-use towers in Bergen, Norway, to office blocks in Vienna, to small-scale interior home architecture and even as a potential spur for affordable housing based on open-source designs.