Ricardo Brites has spent much of his career helping move engineered timber buildings from ambitious design experiments into practical housing solutions.

Originally from Portugal, Brites completed his PhD in timber engineering before working in the United Kingdom during Europe’s rapid expansion of mass timber construction. At the time, Europe was already delivering large-scale timber buildings while North America was still cautiously testing the concept.

“I was part of projects with Lendlease, Mace, and Berkeley Homes when mass timber was transitioning from niche to near-commodity in that market,” says Brites.

Today, as director of engineering and VDC at Mercer Mass Timber, Brites works across Canada and the United States on projects ranging from libraries and universities to large-scale residential and commercial developments. His focus is not simply on promoting timber buildings, but on solving one of the industry’s biggest challenges — how to make them practical and affordable enough for mainstream housing.

“What drives me is not the structural performance of mass timber. That case has been made. What drives me is cost competitiveness,” he says.

Mass timber products such as cross-laminated timber, or CLT, are engineered by layering wood panels together to create structural components strong enough for multi-storey buildings. Increasingly, these systems are being paired with steel or concrete in hybrid designs that aim to balance performance, cost and speed of construction.