Into the Woods - Oregon Stater

To walk into the Portland airport’s new main terminal is to find yourself in a spacious glade within a Pacific Northwest forest, complete with dappled light streaming through skylights to highlight the golden hues of floor-to-ceiling wood. The star of the show is the 9-acre, undulating Douglas fir roof — part of the largest mass timber project of its kind in the world. (Mass timber is smaller pieces of wood fastened together into beams, columns or panels that are as strong as steel or concrete but less carbon intensive.)

More than two dozen Oregon State alumni worked on the PDX project — recently named one of the world’s most beautiful airports — and it reflects OSU’s role in bringing mass timber construction to the U.S. Late College of Forestry Dean Thomas Maness encouraged the Oregon-based DR Johnson Lumber Company to become the first commercial mill in the U.S. to produce cross-laminated timber panels for use in buildings. Partnering with the University of Oregon, he also helped create the TallWood Design Institute, one of just 31 national “Tech Hubs.” The institute conducts testing in OSU’s A.A. “Red” Emmerson Advanced Wood Products Lab and other facilities, innovating new products, influencing building codes and advocating for investment.

“The PDX project wouldn’t have happened without the mass timber revolution that started because of activities at OSU,” says Thomas DeLuca, Cheryl Ramberg Ford and Allyn C. Ford Dean of the College of Forestry. “When I walk into the Portland airport and see the beautiful display of wood, it feels like Beaver town.”

Latticed Timber Ceiling

Inspired by local weaving techniques, the lattice is made up of 35,000 3-by-6-foot pieces of Douglas fir, which can all be traced back to their forests of origin. The lattice wood came from Oregon and Washington small family forests, local tribes, nonprofits, community forests, university forests and other landowners practicing ecologically driven forestry.

Big Glulam Beams

Eugene business Zip-O-Laminators manufactured these lightweight, mega-strong laminated beams, made from wood sourced from Yakama Nation (the largest contributor of wood to the roof), the Coquille Indian Tribe and a mix of Oregon landowners, including OSU research forests.

Mass Plywood Roof Panels

Freres Engineered Wood supplied the roof’s mass plywood panels (not visible here), a product that company vice presidents Tyler and Kyle Freres first envisioned on a trip to Europe with OSU professors. Under the leadership of JELD-WEN Chair of Wood-Based Composites Science Arijit Sinha, OSU collaborated with Freres to develop the first panels. The Department of Wood Science and Engineering and the TallWood Design Institute tested the panels used on the PDX roof.

A Multitiered Roof

The biggest challenge, says Dan Gilkison, ’95, director of engineering for the Port of Portland, which led the project, was installing the roof without disrupting airport operations. Crews built it in modules across the airfield and carefully slid each into place like a cassette — a feat never done before. “It was like running a marathon and doing open-heart surgery,” Gilkison says. “But we didn’t cancel a single flight.” KPFF Consulting Engineers, which includes two alumni, designed and proposed the roof.

More Green, Less Stress

Tree-limb and boulder-shaped seating alongside 72 mature trees, 5,000 plants and 49 skylights promotes visitors’ connection with nature to curb travel stress. Even the irregular, curved pattern of wood grain in the terminal’s floor-to-ceiling wood construction was designed to have a psychological effect, say project architects ZGF, whose team included three Oregon State grads.

Branches of Steel

Each of these 34 steel Y-shaped columns stands 55 feet tall, mimicking trees as they support the massive roof. Special kinds of “shock absorbers” called seismic isolation bearings atop each column will let the roof shift up to 2 feet during an earthquake. This, plus 150-foot-deep foundations and curtain walls that move with the roof, will allow the terminal to withstand a 9.0 magnitude earthquake. Hoffman Skanska Joint Venture, which employs 16 OSU alumni, led construction of the Y columns.

Photos provided by Ema Peter Photography and Dror Baldinger (More Green, Less Stress)

Into the WoodsHow OSU helped put timber at the focus of the new PDX terminal.

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