Mass timber offers a sustainable option for the expansion of our modern world without sacrificing the environment in the process. Somehow, with endless benefits for the environment and local economies, mass timber is still underutilized as opposed to its harmful alternatives. Innovators in the field here at the University of Oregon and Oregon State University are working to change that.
By switching from our go-to harmful materials like steel and cement to structurally engineered wood in building development, we can create homogeneity with structurally tested and known products. We can learn to depend on renewable materials, support our communities, and bring people closer to nature all in one.
Marcus Kauffman, the Biomass Resource Specialist at the Oregon Department of Forestry, has worked in economic development and wood utilization for over 20 years and helps lead the Oregon Mass Timber Coalition as the Communications Officer and the Tech Hub Regional Innovation Officer. Marcus and other innovators in the mass timber field not only believe mass timber to be a superior construction material alternative, but also a holistic approach to many issues like climate change and the current state of the housing crisis on the West Coast of the United States.
Mass timber is a renewable resource that supports the environment in more than one way. Beyond replacing many harmful emissions caused by cement and steel development, mass timber can also create a carbon surplus by keeping fossil fuels in the ground. The trees used for a project are regrown and kept as carbon storage throughout their lifetime, and they are used to sustain the forest as a whole.
“What converts forest lands towards other uses, is the push of development. We get to marginal places to produce trees, but if we place value on our forests, our wood products keep the forests as forests.”
Utilizing engineered wood through mass timber also allows buildings to be built quicker and more efficiently. A plywood house is not only made to order but it is created in a flat-pack approach—meaning it can be assembled and fit together like a gingerbread house. In their approach to bringing mass timber housing to urban areas, one thing to consider is a community’s access to building resources.
Mass plywood houses are made to order and are delivered straight from the factory to the job site. There is a low barrier to entering the field as a community because houses only require a crane and a small crew. Lifting and assembling the large pieces end up taking weeks compared to the months traditional housing models take to be built. Mass timber can allow for neighborhoods to be built in a fraction of the time with minimal emissions brought through cement and steel construction and resource extraction.
Beyond building ease, mass plywood houses have significant wildfire resiliency that makes them an optimal choice in the Pacific Northwest where wildfires are common events. In the event of a wildfire, all it takes for a house to succumb to the flames is one ember slipping through a crack. The pieces of a mass timber house are intricately designed to eliminate that possibility and can bring locally sourced timber and create homes and jobs for people in that same area. These houses can be realistically placed in wildfire areas, and even provide easy relief for people who have already lost their homes.
Mass timber specialists are working to build out the demand side of mass timber and properly introduce their work into real communities. The conversation around mass timber needs to transition from being focused on individual pieces of mass timber, to being a new housing opportunity that benefits not just the homeowner, but entire communities and ecosystems.
To make this dream a reality, there are a few levels of development. At the University of Oregon, housing experts and members of the Oregon Mass Timber Coalition work to design the plans for projects. They work to create realistic models on the production side, while also researching and working to ensure proper forestry practices and collaboration.
“Collaboration is the backbone of this business. We bring people together and convene across the supply chain to inform us what our investments look like.”
The teams have evolved and experimented with their approach in all mass timber to expand and perfect their approach towards housing and answer questions about the mass timber industry. It sheds a hopeful light on the future of development to work with people for the people and have carefully created a well-rounded solution to our problems.
At the Oregon State University’s Tallwood Design Institute, students and professionals in architecture, engineering, design, and other fields collaborate to advance big timber solutions. Here they are working to bridge the gap between their work and accessible housing and provide the data to promote this evolution in the field.
Phill Mann works as the Technical Manager at the Tallwood Design Institute where he applies his years of experience in carpentry and design to guide projects and research at the lab. One of the goals that specialists like Phill and Marcus have for mass timber is to see it become more mainstream within urban development, but before that can happen we need the data to share.
Phill gave me a tour of the A.A. “Red” Emmerson Advanced Wood Products Lab, one of Oregon State’s two new timber buildings added to their internationally recognized College of Forestry. Here, I got to learn about the testing and creation processes of mass timber products and tour their mass plywood house prototype.
Before I saw the mass plywood house model, I wasn’t expecting the size and quality of the house to be so normal. Beyond the tan plywood color, the house is just like any other building I had been in before, only better. The floors, walls, ceilings, closets, and everything in between were built from engineered mass plywood, complete with lighting, heating, air vents, and outlets along the baseboards of the rooms. Each room was glowing from the accentuated wood features brought out by the skylights and large windows. I couldn’t believe it was created in just about a month.
The house was built inside of the lab on the back of their structure testing floor made with four feet of reinforced concrete where mass timber pieces are pushed to their breaking points, and the assembly process of these houses is tested. One of the next steps that Mass Timber is working to perfect is the ability of these structures to be taken down, transported, and reassembled to offer accurate cost, scheduling, and efficiency estimates. This model is going to be taken down and reassembled at the Port of Portland Terminal 2, where a formal marine terminal is being transformed into a campus for mass timber and housing innovation, that links academics with applied research, provides workforce training, and promotes visibility.
Beyond the house, the workers at the lab, including University of Oregon design students, build and test their designs to ensure the strength and resiliency of their products. They have the space, experience, and time unlike others, that allows them to intentionally build and adapt their work to reach the industry further down. The work done here is more advanced than before, with new structure testing, seismic event testing, and growing substance innovation. This has allowed them to be a leader in the growing field, and for their work to advertise for itself.
It is hard to deny the ingenuity of mass timber in accessible housing. Because of this, the market has started to pick it up on its own.
Marcus visited a modular producer who built a modular home inside a factory similar to the Tallwood lab, with mass plywood floors and ceilings. “They said to me, all their floors are now gonna be mass plywood.” There is no going back from using mass timber. Developers, like the one mentioned by Marcus, have cut out significant time and assembly efforts. Once people learn more about mass timber, it is hard to pass up on. Education around mass timber has proven to be the best marketer for the business, and people get to see what all this work can do for them in real life.
While the students and specialists at the University of Oregon and Oregon State University have made major strides in supplying the knowledge and models to bring mass timber into our homes, there is still more to be done.
Oregon State University is getting ready to open a new fire lab at Tallwood to test the heat and flame durability of a structure, and work to rehabilitate models after experiencing a ‘wildfire.’ They will test products in a designated burn field, practice disassembling and replacing outer pieces, and engineer improved mass timber pieces. They will ultimately show the resiliency of mass timber against a wildfire, and their ability to replace individual pieces of the house as needed, keeping up their promises and ensuring assembly efficiency.
There are also plans for a mass timber acoustic lab in Oregon, which would be the first of its kind on the West Coast. “That space is a direct response to the industry’s desire to push mass timber into housing and understand what it means to build houses with people living in them.”
One of the biggest concerns with mass timber is sound-deadening, and what it means for people to live in a mass timber house. This new facility could be the missing link to an industry boom. The lab would be run by The University of Oregon with the Oregon Mass Timber Coalition, and provide people in the industry with easy use and access to the lab’s equipment and the University of Oregon’s research.
All there is left to do is to end our toxic relationship with cement and steel used in our buildings. We no longer need to rely on these previously ‘innovative’ materials, and we need to get back to the basics. Trees have been here forever and will be for the foreseeable future, unlike cement and steel. It can be scary to dive head first, but thankfully, with the work done by those at the University of Oregon and Oregon State University, we can rest assured that we will be making the right move and always have room to improve in the future.
“We are trying to build an ecosystem of support that can drive innovation and bring mass timber to a globally competitive level. The whole purpose is so that mass timber can get us to a higher level of outcomes- quality jobs, economic stability for communities, lower carbon built environment, and healthier forests…to think about mass timber as a catalyst and work with nature to provide a better livelihood for people.”
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