Madison developer poised to break ground on unconventional apartment project Downtown

It will begin with an unusual, if unassuming, apartment building on the 500 block of West Main Street, where Neutral — formerly The Neutral Project — plans to officially break ground in October.

Like Baker’s Place, the building it is constructing Downtown, the four-story development will use mass timber — a structural material made from layers of glued-together wood — to support the floors, reducing the building’s carbon footprint. (The walls will be held up by steel, a more traditional building material that is also responsible for more carbon emissions.)

But sustainability isn’t the only thing that sets the building apart. Every part of its design comes back to a 12-by-12-foot grid created by Neutral’s architectural team. The dimensions of the building are all based on multiples of 12 feet...