Since 2003, Susan Jones has steered atelierjones, her eponymous, woman-led architecture practice, on a variety of cutting-edge residential, commercial, and institutional projects. The Seattle-based studio was one of the first to utilize the sustainable and regenerative properties of mass timber, and it hasn’t looked back. CLT House, sited in Seattle’s Madison Park neighborhood, opened in 2015 and was one of the first homes made of cross-laminated timber (hence the name) in the U.S. Then came other mass timber projects like Bellevue First Congregational Church in Washington and modular homes for people who lost theirs in Greenville, California’s Dixie Fire.
Jones studied philosophy at Stanford before earning her master’s of architecture at Harvard GSD. She eventually became the first woman to be elevated to partner at NBBJ before departing there in the early 2000s to strike out on her own. Today, she teaches at the University of Washington while running her practice, and atelierjones is also part of New York City Economic Development Corporation’s (NYCEDC) Mass Timber Design Studio, which awards grants to pioneers of wood construction.
“When I think about what it means to practice architecture in the 21st century, I think about how we all need to embrace this notion of transdisciplinarity. This is a big word that basically means reaching out to people that know more than we do about the issues we’re not experts in,” Jones told AN. “Sustainability is such a broad, loose, and difficult word with so many definitions. We really try to look at sustainability from a broad condition founded on our approach related to circular economies.”
Heartwood 2023
Together with nonprofit Community Roots Housing, Heartwood, an 8-story residential building in Seattle, supplied much-needed workforce housing when it was finished last year. But it also represented a major milestone for the U.S. more broadly: The 67,000-square-foot building is the first in the country completed as-of-right under the new Type-IV codes, representing a significant precedent for tall timber construction. Heartwood’s timber was sourced from the Cascadia Bioregion, a large forest area in the Pacific Northwest. Using locally sourced materials helped reduce embodied carbon, further offsetting the residential project’s ecological footprint. And thanks to a Wood Innovation Grant from the U.S. Forest Service, the techniques derived from Heartwood will soon be shared in a publication outlining the project’s methods so it can be replicated.
Sierra Institute Replacement Homes 2023
Three years ago, the Dixie Fire devastated Greenville, California, a small town north of Sacramento. More than 1,000 structures, including 660 homes, were destroyed by the inferno. To rehouse people, atelierjones partnered with the Sierra Institute for Community and Environment, a local nonprofit. This project presented its own unique challenges: How does one make a fireproof home out of wood using local, prefabricated methods? Ultimately, atelierjones developed three prototypes that could be easily replicated throughout Greenville. The firm also designed Roundhouse, an after-school center and community hub that serves the area’s Indigenous Maidu people. The contemporary structure by atelierjones echoed the destroyed historic structure while meeting a vital community need for gathering space.
Kenmore House 2022–
If Heartwood is a textbook case for tall timber residential construction, atelierjones’s ongoing Kenmore House exemplifies CLT’s application for single-family residential work. Kenmore House uses many of the same techniques that made CLT House successful in 2015. It is being designed for a multigenerational family outside Seattle. The future building will have a verdant, south-facing courtyard that will flood the interiors with natural light. Last May, the construction site was visited by AIA Seattle’s Mass Timber and Small Practice and Residential Committees. Construction is slated for completion later this year.
Harlem Mass Timber Residential Complex 2024–
After atelierjones joined NYCEDC’s inaugural class of participants in its Mass Timber Design Studio, the office partnered with Magna & York, Sage and Coombe, Swinerton, Timberlab, and DCI Engineers to deliver a new CLT residential complex in Harlem with ample space for community events on the ground level. The project is ongoing and will break ground in the next few years. Jones noted that the future building’s carbon footprint will be further offset thanks to the development team’s elimination of on-site parking. “We decarbonized the project in two ways,” Jones explained. “We designed a structure made of mass timber instead of concrete, and we eliminated an entire subcellar that would have been for parking.”
