Mass Timber
Mass timber construction in buildings, from CLT and glulam structures to the design tradeoffs of building with engineered wood at scale.
Mass timber refers to engineered wood products such as cross-laminated timber (CLT), glued laminated timber (glulam), and nail-laminated timber, which are fabricated in large solid panels and beams. These systems can carry structural loads in mid-rise and increasingly tall buildings, offering an alternative to steel and concrete with lower embodied carbon. Designers working with the material must account for fire performance, moisture, connection detailing, and prefabrication logistics.
Community work under this topic ranges from roof and greenhouse structures in glulam to full mass timber houses assembled in days, and speculative proposals for timber-framed vertical farms and landscaped roofs. Projects show how the material is applied across scales, from civic and agricultural structures to housing and large-scale urban renewal.
Popular projects
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Latest journals
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Snøhetta Lays a Grass-Covered Roof over the Badlands for the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library
In Medora, North Dakota, a single sloping green roof, rammed earth walls and mass timber fold Roosevelt's library into the butte it sits on.
taller paralelo and HRBT Raise a Glulam Greenhouse Roof over a Mexico City Community Orchard
A 36-metre timber and steel-cable canopy in Mexico City shelters fruit trees, exhibitions and a library under a translucent saw-tooth roof.
Madison Square Gardens: A Mass Timber Vertical Farm That Turns the Manhattan Skyscraper into Public Ground
Nicholas Jeffway's CityScraper 2020 entry stacks farms, classrooms and gardens inside an open timber frame rising from Madison Square Park.
23 SUL Assembles a Mass Timber House in Just Ten Days in São Paulo's Pompéia Neighborhood
A hybrid of CLT, glulam, precast concrete and corrugated metal creates a lightweight urban house on a tight site in Pompéia.
