The Candlewood Suites Hotel on Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma, Washington; creates a new confidence to apply Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) for multi-storey buildings in a high seismic zone. The five storey CLT structure contributes to a greener building future as a natural carbon sink while meeting the highly restrictive military Anti-Terrorism and Force Protection (ATFP) requirements. The buildings 74,879 SqFt features many different facilities like spacious studios and one-bedroom suites, business and fitness centers or a BBQ gazebo.
Completed in October 2019, the Candlewood Suites is the first hotel using American produced Cross-Laminated Timber (SmartLam, Columbia Falls, MT), incorporating CLT for the hotel floors, roof, exterior walls, shaft walls and selected interior walls. The prefabricated massive timber panels enabled for a time efficient workflow by shipping the durable wood products directly from the manufacturer to the site. Off-site manufacturing and on-site waste were reduced, and the timber structure was completed 37% faster than a conventional light gauge metal (LGM) framing, used on other hotels with the same scale and scope. The CLT installation started in late October 2018 and was already completed by a 11-man crew (7 of which were laymen and trained on site) in February 2019.
The Candlewood Suites Hotel serves as a five-storey CLT statement that represents the new self-conception of massive timber, as a prefabricated, environmentally friendly and time-saving building method.
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