Structural timber or, as it’s more popularly known, “mass timber” (short for “massive timber”), in a nutshell involves sticking pieces of soft wood — generally conifers like pine, spruce, or fir, but also sometimes deciduous species such as birch, ash, and beech — together to form larger pieces. Using wood as a structural or finishing material not only offers aesthetic beauty, but enhances indoor air quality, acoustics, thermal comfort and energy efficiency. Perhaps most notably, it also has biophilic benefits—the innate sense of wellness humans feel towards nature and natural building products. It’s stunning, it’s quick to build, it’s renewable, and it outperforms concrete and steel in nearly every way.