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Portland airport grows with expansive mass timber roof canopy

Architecture firm ZGF has revamped Portland Airport (PDX) with locally + sustainably sourced mass timber for a brand-new, all wood roof.

Long thought of as too fragile and prone to damage, this natural resource has been re-engineered into a suite of fortified structural elements known as mass timber: glued, nailed doweled panels and beams able to shore-up everything from large residences to full-scale skyscrapers. Most of the 3.5 million planks implemented in the project were sourced from smaller family operated and sustainably minded purveyors, as well as indigenous nations, based within a 300-mile radius; accounting for a notable reduction in the new building’s embodied carbon footprint. When it came to finding a way to expand this major hub “in place” rather than build entirely anew and cause significant distributions – the scourge of many other recent airport renovations – the Port of Portland authority called on ZGF to devise a phased construction strategy.

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