Mass Timber High-Rises: Integrating Form, Structure, and Dwelling Typologies

Abstract

This thesis explores mass timber not only as a sustainable material, but as a spatial and conceptual framework for reimagining vertical urban housing. It treats mass timber as massing, a modular and volumetric system that organizes structure, form, and inhabitation through stacking, subtraction, and spatial play. Moving beyond material or structural efficiency, the project frames mass timber using a grid and modular based kit of parts as both constraints and opportunity as an architectural language for adaptable, community-oriented high-rise housing that responds to the environmental and social challenges of urban living.

Drawing inspiration from Adrian Wong’s explorations of modular systems and spatial adaptability, the research adopts a process of modular arrangement, like assembling and rearranging blocks, where modular volumes are assembled, layered, and reconfigured to generate diverse typologies and shared communal spaces. The project asks: How can the modular logic of mass timber inspire new forms of high-rise housing that balance environmental responsibility with social and spatial richness? The study focuses on how a repetitive volumetric modular unit can be transformed into lively, varied living environments through deliberate acts of aggregation and void-making through subtractive and additive massing.

In addressing Canada’s housing crisis and the global demand for low-carbon, rapidly deployable construction, this thesis positions mass timber’s prefabricated modularity as a key strategy for delivering affordable, efficient, and low-embodied-carbon housing construction that also inspires diverse spatial possibilities. Its lightweight nature reduces on-site labor, and the capacity for off-site fabrication enables faster assembly, minimal waste, and lower emissions compared to conventional concrete or steel systems. Through digital modeling and speculative design studies using Autodesk Revit, the research develops a catalogue of spatial strategies that demonstrate how mass timber’s modular volume can act as both structure and medium for spatial play, producing architecture that is sustainable, adaptable, and deeply human, uniting environmental performance with expressive form and social value.