Timber’s Transformation: An Old Building Material Is Reborn

We ask: If the 19th century modern building material technology was associated with steel and the 20th century with concrete, could the 21st be the century of “MCT,” mass construction timber? Wood, one of the world’s oldest (and greenest) building materials, was the de facto construction material in American cities for over two centuries, falling out of favor when non-combustible materials capable of building high and wide emerged.

Today, highly engineered timber, sized to compete with these structural systems, is making a comeback in Europe, especially in Germany and in Austria, where the world’s first 8-story “ply-scraper” was recently completed. Stateside, the Boston Society of Architects recently featured Urban Timber, an exhibit showcasing innovative developments in wood technology and construction, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is sponsoring a $2M ideas competition for the design of tall wood buildings. Given all of this hoopla, one could assume that we are on the verge of a global timber revolution, yet the U.S. is lagging far behind our European neighbors. In fact, to date, neither the U.S. nor Canadian building codes explicitly recognize mass timber structural systems.

Deeply committed to sustainability, we made the choice to dive feet first into connecting with the past to build the future by employing MCT for the primary structural system of our University of Massachusetts Amherst Design Building. Designed with Equilibrium Consultants, one of the world’s foremost timber engineers, the building will house the university’s Departments of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Regional Planning, and Building Construction Technology, and is now under construction. Permitted through a variance application using the “alternative” method provisions of the building code, our 87,000-square-foot building furthers the university’s educational mission by incorporating examples of the inherent departments’ design practices. Targeting LEED Gold, it will be among the first MCT structures in the region when completed in 2017.

Laminated technologies, first developed in Europe in the 1980s, are allowing us to fabricate fairly massive timber components for the Design Building using small diameter trees sustainably harvested from managed forests. Our selected timber, black spruce, was sourced from Canada’s Boreal forest region, an area that constitutes the world’s largest land based biome. It is constituted to stand up to fire and maintain its structural integrity.

From Metropolis Magazine: metropolismag.com.