The Portland airport’s huge new roof, made from wood that was sustainably harvested from small family forests and mills, tribal nations and community forests in Oregon and Washington, is a tribute to the Pacific Northwest.

“We’re a natural resource state, and creating that connection into our community was really important,” says Vince Granato, chief projects officer at the Port of Portland. Every piece of wood was sourced from within 300 miles of the airport, and about half of it came from 13 small and tribal landowners in Washington and Oregon. 

This kind of sustainable sourcing was new and required a lot of research – first to determine the nature of sustainable forestry, then to find out who was doing it in the region. And that is having a big impact, says Dean Lewis, director of mass timber and prefabrication for Skanska, an international construction and development firm working on the Portland airport extension. “We’re getting calls from Atlanta and New York asking about the kinds of timber we can get within 300 miles of the city. ‘Can we do that here?’ They all want that local story.”

The other fascinating part of the project is how the nine-acre wooden roof was built – in a field between the airport’s active runways over a year, with the wiring, HVAC system and sprinklers installed. Its undulating waves or hills caused one person to wonder if it was a giant skatepark. Then it was separated into 20 panels that Mammoet moved over to the terminal one at a time to be installed and reassembled, using self-propelled modular transporters (SPMTs) – without disrupting passenger traffic.

The new roof is part of the port’s $2 billion PDX Next project, a series of large capital improvement projects that will wrap up in 2025. Expanding and updating the main terminal is the largest component and will be fully revealed in May 2024, although there has been extensive media coverage as the construction proceeds.

Mass timber buildings have become popular in the US, as builders, developers, and architects embrace them as a less carbon-intensive alternative to concrete, with about 1,860 such projects already built or in progress, says Fast Company. While in 2015, just four plants in the US and Canada made mass timber, today a dozen US firms can supply mass timber panels, and just about a quarter of such wood comes from overseas.

Sourcing the wood for the Portland project took six years of planning, research, forest visits and many phone calls between the Port of Portland, Portland-based ZGF Architects, regional tribes, family-run forests, mill owners and brokers, explains Reasons to be Cheerful.

Sustainable sourcing meant being able to trace where the wood came from, and this was a new idea within the supply chain. Some people were dubious about whether it could be done. But Ryan Temple, founder and owner of Sustainable Northwest Wood, saw the project as a chance to identify and celebrate the people who are sustainably managing their forestland.

For example, the Coquille Tribe in southwestern Oregon, which provided the wood that surrounds six giant oval skylights, harvested Douglas fir from a 30-acre opening that produced 40,000 board feet per acre, which is 30 to 50% higher than a typically managed forest would yield. 

“Not only is this higher ecological functioning,” says Jacob Dunn, ZGF’s sustainability lead for the PDX airport project. “But they are getting more wood out of that because that’s how the tribe has been managing it for a long time. It’s the best of both worlds.”  

Engaging the timber supply chain in this way was a revelation for Dunn and for ZGF. “It really made us understand the impact of our procurement decisions,” he said. “Connecting back to the land that created it. Understanding social histories, the economic histories of the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest, which is very rich, colorful and controversial in some cases.” 

Sources:

PDX gives airport visitors a reason to look up. Oregon Public Broadcasting, Jul 14 2022

Airport terminal expansion project takes flight. Mammoet

PHOTOS: New PDX roof fully assembled over main airport terminal KGW8 News, Aug. 9, 2023

Portland’s new airport terminal looks like it’s from the future—but it’s built out of wood Fast Company, Oct. 26 2023

Cover image: Port of Portland