The Design & Build with FSC Award honors designers and builders who are committed to using FSC-certified wood and creating a marketplace that promotes environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically prosperous forest management. This award is open to homeowners, architects, interior designers, general contractors, builders, consultants and other professionals committed to using FSC-certified wood.

Each year, the winners of this award are announced at Greenbuild. In anticipation of the 2011 winners, we take a look back at the winning projects from 2010.

2010 Residential Award Winner: The Vermont Street Project

Location: Portland, Ore.

Architect & General Contractor: New Energy Works

Owner: Jonathan Orpin

All of the solid wood used in this 2,000-square-foot home is FSC-certified — reclaimed, recycled or freshly sawn. The home features:

- Reclaimed timber frame

- Reclaimed and repurposed flooring

- Reclaimed wood cabinets, counters, doors and custom dining table

- Reclaimed exterior siding and decking

- Fresh-sawn flooring and paneling

The Vermont Street Project is the result of the homeowner’s nearly three decades in the business of custom timberwork and environmentally sensitive design and construction. The beauty of this home is a direct reflection of selecting and showcasing the resilient, organic fibers only nature can produce and the mindfulness of choosing 100-percent reclaimed, recycled and sustainably managed forest products.

The exposed timber frame timber functions as both the structural integrity of the home and as part of the aesthetic that defines its interior spaces and Pacific Northwest architecture. The keystone of the house is a peeled, smooth FSC-certified log that spans two stories on an outside corner of the house. Creative woodworking is displayed through interior doors featuring wood salvaged from pickle vats, still containing dark mineral stains left by the brine.

In addition to the FSC-certified woods, wood waste serves a role in the insulation and insulated concrete forms in the home’s foundation. The house is a candidate for LEED Platinum certification.

2010 Commercial Award Winner: FondAction Building Quebec

Location: Quebec City, Quebec, Canada

Architect: GHA Architecture et Développement Durable

Owner: FondAction CSN pour la coopération et l’emploi

The structure of this six-floor, 60,000-square-foot office building is composed entirely of FSC-certified glued-laminated (glu-lam) wood. Having substituted wood for the more typical steel and concrete structure, the FondAction building is now the tallest wood structure building in North America.

The final building integrates about 415 MBF of wood, of which approximately one-half are structural glu-lams, while more than 200 MBF remain uncovered, and therefore visible, in the floors and ceilings. FSC-certified wood is showcased throughout the building’s interior, including the doors and door frames, architectural walls and wall coverings, and a suspended wooden ceiling in the main entrance.

 The use of high-quality engineered wooden glu-lams for the building structure not only eliminated the need for almost two times the volume of concrete, but also made use of spruce heads abandoned on the forest floor by the lumber industry and will provide natural insulation that will reduce energy consumption for the life of the building.

The project team was inspired by an International Panel on Climate Change report that found using structural wood instead of concrete and steel in construction is an effective way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Considering only its construction phase, this building succeeded in producing a net carbon reduction of 1,350 tons of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas equivalent produced by 270 cars in one year.