Think Wood Exhibit bolsters partnership between colleges
Wood products, including mass timber, have seen strong growth in the last decade as they meet demands for sustainable and affordable living and working spaces. Wood is the only major building material that is renewable. When wood is used in construction, it continues to store carbon for the life of the structure, minimizing a building’s carbon footprint. Wood also has a notable affect on emotional well-being with visual access to the material contributing to a number of physiological benefits. With the expansion of sustainable forestrypractices, wood is the optimal structural building material in the United States for architects that seek to lower embodied carbon in building construction, a keyinitiative in the flight against climate change.
This Cowgill Lobby exhibit, in conjunction with the Think Wood Mobile Pavilion – located behind the A+A Library on Cowgill Hall’s north lawn (Oct. 17-19) – is intended to highlight the diverseity of ways in which faculty and students of the School of Architecture + Design engage with timber through studio-based design projects, as well as through ‘Beyond Boundaries’ research endeavours. A selection of buildings that have been honored through the U.S. Wood Design Award program are also featured. The projects showcase a diverse range of wood products, application methods, aesthetics, and structural performance possibilities.
On Exhibit:
US Wood Design Awards
“The annual awards program charts the growing prevalence of mass timber and light- frame projects in modern architecture – and recognizes the skill and ingenuity of project teams” (WoodWorks). Selected projects are diverse in program and type, with a particular focus on university-related institutional buildings [academic buildings, high-bay research buildings, etc.] per our university audience.
Student Design Work
The selection of student work includes project examples from across the curriculum and across project scales. In particular, recent 3rd-year projects from the ACSA Timber in the City competition and 4th-year studio work are displayed. While some projects employ light-frame construction techniques for small-scale work, or mass timber for large mid-rise projects, the design and construction process of each project is reliant on digital design and production methods, from ‘fileto factory.’ Without recent advances in glue science and computational design and production methods, mid-to-high-rise mass timber buildings would not be economically or physically possible to construct.
Sponsors:
Softwood Lumber Board, U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, and the APA – Engineered Wood Association.
Faculty Research
On display are material samples of structural cross-laminated timber (CLT) from the federally funded research project “Increasing hardwood utilization in cross-laminated timber markets,” a USDA Wood Innovation grant reciepient from the Department of Sustainable Biomaterials and the School of Architecture + Design at Virginia Tech. Located in the “timber basket” of the United States, Virginia Tech is leading the development of high performance mass timber products that utilize both hardwood and softwood lumber for enhanced structural and aesthetic performance. The wood samples on display, many of which have undergone structural testing to failure, are a combination of hardwoods and softwoods. Can you determine why certain wood types were used and how that might relate to performance?
Edward Becker, an associate professor in the College of Architecture, Arts and Design says the Southwest Virginia and West Virginia region is the mecca of hardwood resources in North America. Becker’s research focuses on using low carbon, sustainable resources for building construction using mass timber products. Specifically, students work with cross-laminated wood. The crucial element? The joint effort with AAD and the College of Natural Resources and Environment.
The Think Wood exhibit is presented by the Softwood Lumber Board, and is a culmination of the collaboration between the two colleges.
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