Mass Timber Home by Green Canopy Node revolutionizes construction and advances sustainable building practices.
By Real Leaders
For the last several decades, the U.S. housing supply has not kept pace with demand, leaving America short millions of homes today in a gap that continues to widen. To help address that problem, Green Canopy NODE, a sustainable construction technology company, developed a Mass Timber Model Home Assembly Kit that provides developers a path to deliver housing twice as fast with greater predictability.
“Green Canopy NODE’s Mass Timber Model Home is a game-changer for developers,” Co-CEO Bec Wilder says. “We all want to solve the housing market’s pains, but we get stuck in long development timelines and traditional construction schedules. Our model home will help cut out a lot of hurdles and risks we all have traditionally struggled with and help us all simply deliver more housing.”
From Months, Not Years: Building Better & Faster for Communities
The model home was designed as a turnkey housing unit and completed it in March 2023 in partnership with Mercer Mass Timber. They controlled costs with pre-planned and streamlined construction, delivered it faster through simultaneous manufacturing and site prep, and avoided weather delays in construction through off-site manufactured modular installation.
“Addressing the housing crisis with the same solutions we’ve been using for the last 100+ years simply isn’t going to achieve the outcomes we need,” Co-CEO Aaron Fairchild says. “We are excited to bring the power of manufacturing to help regenerate communities and environments all while reducing waste and minimizing embodied carbon.”
The Mass Timber Model Home is a 1,200-square foot, two-story modular home with a rooftop deck, two bedrooms, and one-and-a-half bathrooms. It was built using precision-engineered mass timber components manufactured offsite, demonstrating the power of prefabrication, installation, and logistics.
Game-Changer for Developers: Speed & Sustainability
The modules for the home were assembled offsite in Spokane, Washington, and were ready for shipping in two days. Onsite assembly for the entire home occurred in two days during a blizzard, further testing the company’s process and capabilities to build under extreme conditions.
“Building with mass timber delivers increased efficiency, enhanced sustainability, health benefits, and unparalleled aesthetics, making it an ideal choice for developers and investors interested in low- and mid-rise residential construction technology,” Fairchild says. “One of our bigger goals is carbon negativity. I think that we will crack the code and we will be able to have people housed affordably, humanely, and with dignity.”
Benefits of Mass Timber Homes
- Increases efficiency and is 44% faster to complete than traditional construction (under 100 days from project start to completion)
- Controls costs with pre-planned and streamlined construction
- Avoids weather delays through off-site manufactured modular installation
- Enhances sustainability by reducing embodied carbon footprint and waste
- Stores 6.6 times more carbon than a stick frame home and offsets two-and-a-half stick frame houses with carbon storage
- Lasts longer than standard code-built homes and can be deconstructed and reused
