What Every Mass Timber Designer Needs to Know about Facades w/ Chris O'Hara of Lerch Bates

Attend the Mass Timber Group Summit: https://www.masstimber.group/summit Learn from real mass timber projects and industry leaders. Join our Newsletter: https://www.masstimber.group/newslett... Most mass timber conversations focus on the structure. That’s the easy part. It's everything at the edges, where the timber meets the facade, where the floor meets the wall, where the warm inside meets the cold outside, that determines whether a building lasts 20 years or 200. Chris is a structural engineer and senior design principal of StudioNYL, a Lerch Bates company. He's worked on 25+ mass timber structural projects and another dozen on the facade side. On many of them, he's done both. He breaks down why aluminum facades act like cookware and how moving insulation to the exterior keeps condensation away from your timber, why the biggest moisture threat to mass timber is the rainstorm that hits mid-construction, how panelized facade systems speed up weathering-in but introduce thermal risk at the stack joints, and how fabrication advances are letting timber replace aluminum as the spanning element in curtain walls. 🔴 Subscribe for more Mass Timber expert interviews:    / @masstimbergroup   Share this episode with an AEC friend:    • What Every Mass Timber Designer Needs to K...   Join our newsletter to learn from real mass timber projects and industry leaders. https://www.masstimber.group/newslett... 0:00 – Aluminum facades act like cookware 0:35 – What makes a mass timber building last 2:41 – Chris's background: structure and facade 3:54 – Why wood's nature creates vulnerability 6:33 – Main envelope goals and condensation risk 8:07 – Thermal bridges and the cookware problem 10:20 – Why stud cavity insulation causes problems 12:01 – Lifting the stack joint 18 inches 13:15 – Thermally broken systems explained 14:25 – Panelized facades: thermal trade-offs 15:08 – Biggest moisture risk is mid-construction 15:39 – Marrying timber and facade speed 19:16 – USFS Museum: 13 species, tree joinery 20:20 – The cheese grater waterproofing detail 25:29 – CLT walls and fastener penetrations 26:38 – The pen test explained 29:54 – Thermally modified wood and Accoya 31:23 – How fabrication capabilities changed design 35:11 – Timber curtain walls replacing aluminum 39:32 – How to reach Chris