Developing sustainably constructed buildings is an urgent concern as cities look to decrease their ecological footprint. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) sought to address this issue by exploring the potential of mass timber to reduce the embodied carbon footprint of high-rise buildings. The Timber Tower Research Project, funded by the Softwood Lumber Board (SLB) and launched in 2013, examined solutions that could utilize mass timber as the main structural material to reduce the embodied carbon footprint of buildings by 60 to 75 percent compared to a benchmark concrete building. The research team proposed a structural system called the Concrete Jointed Timber Frame, a system which employs mass timber for main structural elements and reinforced concrete for connections. This approach was further developed in a second report in 2014 that focused on gravity framing systems and recommended a physical testing program.