United States
Leadership Bio
Peter Kobelt
Director of Mass Timber Solutions STO Building Group
Pete Kobelt is STO Building Group’s Mass Timber Practice Lead. He has been engrained in the exploration and adoption of mass timber in the US & Canada since its early days, contributing to the conception and establishment of the first CLT manufacturing plant in the US, the construction of three additional plants, and the first and largest mass timber student housing project in the US, among many other projects. Today Pete has helped deliver nearly 2M SF of Mass Timber projects in North America.
Pete’s passion for mass timber stems from his time helping to start and build three craft breweries in Seattle and Whitefish, Montana in the 1990s. The complexity of their design, construction, and operation led Pete to study new, innovative, and more sustainable construction techniques. As a dual US/Swiss citizen with family ancestry in Swiss forestry, Pete was able to spend time in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany, studying the dramatic advances in engineered wood manufacturing and construction and the subsequent advent of mass timber. With the gracious support of his European colleagues, Pete was part of a team that imported the first commercial mass timber project to the US in 2011. Many years later, mass timber construction is disrupting the industry and helping provide a cost effective path to sustainability for the built environment.