UC Santa Cruz’s Kresge College is a project that brilliantly showcases how robust digital construction technologies and prefabricated mass timber can work within sensitive ecological contexts. Working alongside Studio Gang and Holmes US, our team provided design-build services for the Kresge College Academic Building, as well as a series of three mass-timber student housing buildings in the California Redwood Forest that honor the legacy of Architect Charles Moore.

Utilizing state-of-the-art modeling and virtual design, Timberlab was able to preserve the surrounding redwood tree canopy by creating a Point Cloud model of every tree on the construction site. This method allowed us to precisely site the buildings and plan crane operations, ensuring minimal impact on the legacy redwoods adjacent to the site. By leveraging prefabricated and modularized mass timber construction, much of the work was built off-site, reducing the environmental footprint during construction. The result is a series of curvilinear mass timber structures that meander around existing groves of redwood trees, preserving the natural landscape and providing a biophilic, future-forward learning environment.