It’s a familiar story: For years, housing costs have soared while demand rapidly outpaced new construction. Adding to the crisis are a stuttering supply chain, outdated building codes, and too few forestry professionals. In such a landscape, the American Dream of owning a home begins to seem but a fantasy.

But this isn’t where the story ends; rather, it’s the beginning of a new one. A collaborative effort between universities, private industry, and state agencies combines new research, innovative manufacturing and construction, forest stewardship, and sustainable design into a force that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

“Our vision is a thriving, inclusive mass timber innovation ecosystem that addresses urgent societal challenges in rural economic development, forest health, and housing that reinvigorates disadvantaged communities and drives the U.S. to become a global leader in this rapidly growing sector over the next decade,” said Judith Sheine, a professor in the UO’s Department of Architecture and the project director and principal investigator.

As the Oregon Mass Timber Innovation Engine (OMTIE) nears the submission of a proposal for a National Science Foundation Regional Innovation Engine, project partners—including University of Oregon, Oregon State University (OSU),  Washington State University, and others in state agencies and industry such as the Oregon Department of Forestry and the Port of Portland—coalesce around Oregon’s need for low-carbon construction, market competitiveness, and resilient forests.

“We are building solutions to housing,” said Marcus Kauffman, biomass resource specialist for the Oregon Department of Forestry. “A main thrust of this innovation ecosystem is to overcome the barriers to housing. It takes people working together across agencies, institutions, and industry. Not one of these operating in isolation can build a solution.”

Phase One Progress

Already there are successes worth celebrating. The first is a model mass plywood home built at the A.A. “Red” Emmerson Lab at OSU’s College of Forestry, the home of the TallWood Design Institute, a collaborative research initiative between the UO and OSU. The two-bedroom house is the first prototype of what researchers hope will be one solution to the housing crisis in Oregon—an affordable, earthquake-resistant home that can be built much more quickly than a traditional house. A contractor will build the second iteration of the mass ply house this year to help the research team develop more accurate estimates of construction costs and streamline the process based on input from construction professionals.

The mass timber ecosystem has also made possible the beginning phases of the redevelopment of the Port of Portland’s Terminal 2 as a mass timber housing innovation campus, part of the US Economic Development Administration Build Back Better Regional Challenge funding awarded to the Oregon Mass Timber Coalition in September 2022. The UO’s Oregon Acoustics Research Laboratory (OARL) will serve as an anchor tenant on the site. OARL is a state-of-the-art acoustic testing facility, able to perform high-throughput testing for mass timber panel floor and ceiling assemblies that include a variety of materials, primarily targeting the reduction of sound transmission between multistory, multifamily housing units. The lab will be designed for the needs of both university researchers and private sector testing.

Smart Forestry and Advanced Manufacturing

After a hollowing out over the past 50 years, the forestry industry has continued to face two critical challenges: the high cost of forest restoration and a shrinking, aging forestry workforce.

“We are bringing to bear technology approaches to improve worker safety and operational efficiency,” Kauffman said. “If the work isn’t done efficiently, we won’t ever get ahead of the problem of increasingly extreme wildfires. We have millions of acres of forest we need to treat. The moral imperative is to drive down costs to protect peoples’ homes and forests while creating something of value that would otherwise be burned in a slash pile, while making forestry careers safer and more attractive.”

OMTIE addresses these issues through use-inspired, translational and data-driven R&D: including user-friendly forest mapping tools, computer and sensor vision technologies to assess quality of logs to optimize product yield and reduce waste, computer-vision based forest harvester operator assist systems, forest harvesting automation, assistive technologies such as exoskeletons, and technology-based workforce training programs.

Ecosystem partners also propose to include new robotic tools to identify waste materials in mass timber manufacturing for use in secondary products, such as furniture, and to automate fabrication processes. The collaborative plans to provide entrepreneurial training and exposure to capital resources for startups in advanced manufacturing and new building products, as well as workforce training in digitally controlled manufacturing machines.

Sustainable and Resilient Building

But bringing to bear a mass timber ecosystem that can rise to the challenges facing society—both technologically and climatically—requires new approaches to mass timber building products. Previously underutilized species, such as ponderosa pine, western hemlock, and white fir, could be used in mass timber manufacturing. Structural optimization of panels will lead to more efficient use of fiber with less waste and R&D on “smart” panels that incorporate moisture sensors, acoustic and thermal materials will lead to improved performance of mass timber. Wood waste and invasive species (that threaten native habitats and increase wildfire risks) will be tested, developed and commercialized to become biogenic building enclosure materials for mass timber buildings, including insulation and cladding.

In addition to contributing to forestry practices and wood products uses that can moderate risks from wildfire and invasive species, project partners are studying performance data on resilience to natural hazards—seismic, fire, moisture—and more efficient structural systems to address affordability.

Beyond housing, mass timber products can be used in myriad other ways, including in commercial, industrial, and institutional buildings. At this time, perhaps the best-known use of mass timber is in the newly remodeled Portland International Airport main terminal—its soaring ceilings are made of wood harvested from within a day’s drive of the city.

As the Oregon Mass Timber Innovation Engine revs up, the next generation of the timber industry in the region prepares for a bright and sustainable future for people and forests alike.

— By Kelley Christensen, Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation