Within the United States, mass timber is virtually synonymous with the Pacific Northwest, a vast region at whose center lies the Oregon State University (OSU) College of Forestry in Corvallis. The school’s status as a pivotal industry node informed the design of two new building projects—the George W. Peavy Forest Science Center and the A. A. “Red” Emmerson Advanced Wood Products Laboratory—that together form the Oregon Forest Science Complex. Both were designed by Katerra partner Michael Green Architecture (MGA), and though differing in size and program, both make use of nearly every timber product under the sun, all while setting a high bar for sustainable sourcing and resilient engineering.

At 80,000 square feet, the Peavy Center is the larger, more public-facing of the two structures and houses the College of Forestry’s lecture halls, research laboratories, and a host of administrative functions. These are distributed throughout a pair of simple three-story volumes adjoined perpendicularly at the hip and fastened to the existing Richardson Hall. (The stand-alone Advanced Wood Products Laboratory consists of a lofty structural testing bay, replete with a 25-foot-tall concrete reaction wall and a manufacturing bay.)

The college’s mass timber banner is picked up on the building envelope, where off-white bands of acetylated Red Adler blocks—from a patented process developed by Accoya that rot-proofs timber cladding and improves dimensional stability—act as a rainscreen for the stick-built curtain wall system. These vertical bands of wood establish the rhythm for the long facades, while yawning glass curtain walls announce entrances and the double-height atrium. For the roof, the architectural team opted to use lightweight and durable mass plywood panels developed by Freres Lumber, whose Lyons factory is just an hour’s drive east of OSU.

The structural solution is relatively straightforward, shifting between a post-and-beam grid of Douglas fir glulam elements in the common spaces and offices and a hybrid concrete-and-glulam structure in the lecture halls. (Bands of concrete run the length of the horizontal glulam beams where floor spans are greatest, and the two are bonded together with a series of diagonal steel screws.) Cross-laminated timber (CLT) floor plates and shear walls fill out the structural diagram, but the latter disguise a major innovation. Designed by the Vancouver-based firm Equilibrium Consulting and fabricated by Oregon manufacturer DR Johnson, the shear walls are rocking walls, the first to be used in North America.

“The concept was originally developed and applied on a smaller-scale building in New Zealand and is in direct response to providing resilient design, given the high seismic requirements,” said MGA partner Natalie Telewiak. “The CLT shear walls are composed of independent sections connected vertically by a post-tension system. This allows the walls to move and self-center during an event and for components to be selectively replaced on an as-needed basis after the event occurs.”

Notably, Peavy Hall, and the greater Forest Science Complex, are constructed of timber products sourced within Oregon. What’s more, the complex is designated a SMART-CLT project and, as such, is embedded with hundreds of sensors that track moisture content, thermal performance, structural movements, and other such indicators to boost the life span of the complex. With the substantial backing of the state’s forestry industry, OSU’s Forest Science Complex has established a template for other universities in the region to follow, whereby campus expansion projects become laboratories for innovation in mass timber design and environmental conservation. This is surely just the beginning.

Architect: Michael Green Architecture
Engineer: Equilibrium Consulting
General contractor: Andersen Construction
Design assist and build: StructureCraft
Manufacturers: Accoya, DR Johnson Wood Innovations, Roseburg Forest Products, Freres Lumber, View Glass, EFCO