Microsoft, the parent company of LinkedIn, is taking a bold stance on tackling climate change. As part of its attempt to become carbon negative by 2030, it has pledged to tackle embodied carbon across its building projects. (You can read more here.)
This initiative focused on recycled plywood for a 200,000-square-foot LinkedIn campus in Omaha, Nebraska.
Working with Gensler, the world’s largest office design firm, our product development team at Urban Evolutions was charged with coming up with a contemporary, reclaimed solution for the 40,000 square feet of plywood paneling and ceiling baffles needed throughout the project.
Ruling out more rustic plywood options, we tapped into our urban wood program, which focuses on giving felled trees collected by municipalities across Wisconsin a second life. We had considered making veneer using these trees in the past, but did not have a large enough customer to make it happen.
With the size and scale of the Omaha project, we were able to entice Great Lakes Veneer, a large, 100+ year-old veneer manufacturer in our home state of Wisconsin, to take up the challenge and work with repurposed trees.
“We enjoyed being part of this reclaimed wood project, said Nick Rogers, Great Lakes Veneer. “The urban trees presented some challenges because we had to deal with more variability than our normal logs.”
“Thanks go out to all the vendors and installers that worked to make the project, a first of its kind, a success,” says Robin Janson, Urban Evolutions president.
“We are excited to support domestic manufactured plywood from reclaimed trees,” said Janson. “These trees would otherwise be turned into mulch or burned for fuel. Both of these options, while preferable to landfill, do little to maintain the carbon that those trees have gathered and stored for hundreds of years.”
Read more about Gensler’s workplace design strategy for the LinkedIn Omaha office. Visit Our Portfolio to read more about the second phase of this project.
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