Molly Cutler
Principal, Cutler Development
Scott and Molly Cutler own Cutler Development, a commercial development firm based in Des Moines, Iowa. The firm’s mission is to “develop projects that better neighborhoods, society and the environment.” They focus on urban infill, mixed-use projects in walkable areas serviced by mass transit. Their projects all have a workforce/affordable component to the residential units, with unit set-asides for residents making 30-80% of Area Median Income. They incorporate sustainable design into historic renovation and new construction alike, and have completed one mixed-use mass timber building (11 residential units) and are under construction on a second mixed-use mass timber building (20 residential units) that is on track to be the first workforce housing Zero Carbon Certified building in the country (as certified by the International Living Future Institute).
Molly joined Cutler Development after almost a decade working for ExxonMobil in Houston, Texas where she held leadership roles in manufacturing, data analytics, and business development during her tenure. She likes to say she was doing “development work” at ExxonMobil when building out financial models for potential future petrochemical plants. She is a native of Northern Virginia and received her Chemical Engineering degree from Yale University. Molly and Scott enjoy working together on projects and continue to push the boundaries of environmental design on both new construction and renovation projects. They live in Des Moines, Iowa with their newborn son and dog. Molly serves on the MLAB board of the USGBC Iowa Chapter and is committed to accelerating green building practices, technologies, policies and standards in the Midwest.
Scalable, Nature-Based and Modular Approaches for Affordable Multi-Family Development
The need for new construction, including affordable housing to address social and economic needs, has not decreased. Yet, the need for an environmentally resilient commodity-building product that can compete in these building markets is becoming more urgent. In recent years, Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) has emerged as a leading-edge structural building product that combines the biophilic, carbon-sequestering, and renewable properties of wood with the strength of engineered construction technology, but the North American market has yet to fully embrace it due to perceived feasibility and supply chain barriers.
The key to making CLT affordable and accessible is in orienting mass timber building design towards standardization and repeatability while revisioning the way that domestic mass timber suppliers can streamline their product range and delivery to improve accessibility and economic inclusion for CLT. This presentation will educate architects and designers on design methodologies to best orient projects towards this outcome, as well as general contractors and mass timber fabricators on practices to provide crucial savings on cost and timeline to prevent CLT from being value-engineered out of projects in favor of less sustainable alternatives, and to move beyond market perceptions of exclusivity. Direct applications will be presented through two approaches and case studies for projects in Des Moines, Iowa, and Springdale, Arkansas.