After opening last year as New York City’s first mass timber structure, residents are settling into a new environment.
The experience of living in the city’s first mass timber structure is driving a robust and growing conversation among current and future residents that is likely to impact future such developments. With that in mind, Metropolis, the design and architecture publication, recently paid a visit to Frame 122, a former parking garage in the Clinton Hill area of Brooklyn that now houses 15 apartments.
“One of the real first concepts of this project was to walk through a wood entry gate and feel the wood structure,” says architect Brent Buck. “We’re trying to bring nature to New York and give people a more organic living experience.” From the street, the building adopts a rational architectural language that visually aligns with its brownstone neighbors but contrasts with its modest, industrial materiality of corrugated sheet metal, Metropolis wrote. Carved Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) panels, embedded with round Prouvé-esque cast glass blocks, form a semi-transparent entry screen, offering a preview of the wooden structure and courtyard beyond, and developing an expanded typological solution for the building lobby.
Rather than treating circulation as a purely functional necessity, Frame 122 organizes daily movement around a shared exterior courtyard, Metropolis wrote. Apartments line the perimeter of the site, enclosing an open-air communal space that residents pass through before reaching their units. Dual curving staircases rise from the courtyard to open walkways, creating moments of pause and encounter along the way.
Buck said mass timber was selected as the building’s primary structural system for its environmental, experiential and logistical benefits. CLT panels support the floor and roof assemblies, while glulam beams define interior spaces, leaving the structure exposed throughout the apartments. “Because we have an exterior lobby space, it allowed us to create these wood entry gates that hint to occupants and passersby that this is a mass timber structure.”
As Buck noted, the site remained unusually quiet during installation, with the scent of spruce, pine, and fir lingering after rainfall. Subtle details reinforce the mass timber structure: reclaimed barn beams repurposed as benches, 15 recessed bricks marking each apartment and custom uplighting that casts a warm glow through the timber structure at night.
“It’s incredibly difficult to build here,” Buck reflects. “But hopefully this building inspires other architects and developers to keep pushing this type of development forward.”
Editor’s note: IWF Network News originally reported on Frame 122 in July of 2025 as the building was just being completed.
Image: Frame 122
