The Benefits of Mass Timber for Community Spaces

Don Weinreich FAIA is a Partner at Ennead Architects with over 30 years of experience working across typologies, with a particular emphasis on delivering transformative architectural solutions for academic, cultural, research and humanitarian institutions. Some of his notable projects include The Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact, The David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and the Future Museum in Wisconsin. In addition to managing major projects, Don is responsible for Ennead’s digital technology development, leading the implementation of new ways in which architectural computing can advance the firm’s practice. Don also has a leadership role in Ennead Lab, the firm’s research and development arm. Within the Lab he has co-led the Rethinking Refugee Communities Project in collaboration with UNHCR. He is an alumnus of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

With architectural experience spanning more than two decades, Isaac fosters collaborative teams while nurturing a deep passion for exceptional design. He has led design teams on award-winning endeavors like the Bonneville Power Administration’s Technical Services Building and Hillsboro Oregon’s Hidden Creek Community Center. Isaac is dedicated to unlocking the potential of design through innovative project delivery, including mass timber and prefabrication.

Erik Knauss is an architect with INFORM Studio where he advances the practice through discovery of digital efficiencies, promoting new ideas and systems, and collaborating with experienced knowledge holders to make built projects successful. Erik is passionate about the use of forest-based bioproducts in architectural space as a means to propel the AEC industry into a new sustainable material economy and to promote user wellbeing. He was part of the design team for the celebrated Community Center at A.B. Ford Park which is the first Cross-laminated timber (CLT) building to be completed for the City of Detroit.

Pursuing his passion for mass timber innovation, Erik was part of a 2023 US delegation for the Research and Study Mission to Finland with a group from Michigan organized by the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Department of Natural Resources, and Michigan State University (MSU). During this trip, Erik co-led a workshop titled “Market Development for Circular Bioeconomy Products.” Erik began his mass timber research as a Master of Architecture student at Lawrence Technological University where he received the prestigious Pellerin Travel Fellowship allowing him to travel to Finland to pursue research investigating the cultural and economic value of exposed structural timber, prior to joining INFORM in 2017. In 2019 he presented this research in a public lecture at LTU and was an adjunct Professor from 2019 – 2022.

For Erik, purposeful architecture is rooted in spatial responses that listen to people, respect the environment, and prioritize user needs and he continues to seek opportunities to inspire and impact through design.

Jack Murphy is Executive Editor of The Architect’s Newspaper. Previously he was Editor of Cite: The Architecture and Design Review of Houston and an adjunct professor at the University of Houston. His writing has appeared in Architectural Record, Dwell, The Architect’s Newspaper, Texas Architect, Places, Cite, PLAT, Paprika!, the SF Gate, the Houston Chronicle, and the New York Review of Architecture, among other publications. He received an Honorable Mention for the Pierre Vago Journalism Award 2020 from the International Committee of Architecture Critics. He earned degrees in architecture from MIT and Rice University and contributed to award-winning architectural practices in Texas, New York, and Massachusetts.