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Component Manufacturing dverti$ dverti $ er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Adverti$$er
March 2023 #15284 Page #128
The Last Word Is the Future Flat? eeing so many flat roofs early this year made me wonder if the future of truss building will be flat. During the January SBCA Phoenix Open Joe Kannapell, P.E. Quarterly Meetings, some of us saw Truss Fab Components’ yard loaded with flat trusses, and others saw the flat roof lines of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West. The following week at the IBS Las Vegas Show, many of us also saw the National Homebuilders’ vision of the future at their annual exhibit of The New American Home (TNAH). While the roof of last year’s TNAH was only half-flat, this year’s roof was entirely flat, like its neighbors, and like several TNAH homes from previous years (see also The Last Word from March 2022, “The New American Home”).
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These new Las Vegas homes actually echo century-old designs, not only Taliesin but also Wright’s other work. Note the long stretches of white-banded cantilevers in both his Falling Water and the 2023 TNAH. While today most CMs rarely supply trusses to custom houses like these, they do increasingly supply scaled down flat truss packages for detached single family, town homes, and condos. Often, they deliver them into communities with conventionally pitched roofs, as was the case with the 2022 TNAH. As the aesthetics of these houses become more mainstream, the appeal of steeply pitched roofs is bound to diminish. Although this “look” is centuries old, it may become unsustainable due to increased energy consumption, material costs, and maintenance concerns. What does it cost to replace the old church roof shown here or to work safely on the steep slopes of these new custom homes?
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