![]() “You’re keeping that carbon out of the environment for at least the life of the building,” said McLain, “possibly for generations.” In addition to lower emissions in the manufacturing process, wood stores carbon for as long as it remains in use, essentially locking in the carbon it has absorbed over its lifetime. It’s also being conscious about the materials used from the ground up.” “It’s not just about insulation and replacing windows anymore. “The built environment is responsible for 40 percent of global carbon emissions,” said Nedzinski. Demand for innovative low embodied carbon products has increased, bringing new thinking to how renewable resources, like wood, can replace fossil fuel intensive materials like steel and concrete. That has begun to shift as the understanding of a building’s carbon footprint expands beyond energy efficiency to include how and where materials are manufactured, and how far they have to travel. Over decades, the industry moved away from “heavy timber” toward light frame construction, using steel and concrete to provide support in tall, commercial buildings and multi-family homes.Ī Bread Loaf carpenter attaches supports. Traditionally, large diameter trees were used to provide structural support in buildings. Other mass timber products use nails or dowels to create similar structural building components made of solid wood. Cross-laminated timber and glulam beams which are being used at Fairbanks, consist of multiple wood panels that are glued together, providing strength and stability that is comparable to concrete, steel, and heavy timber. Mass timber is an umbrella term used to describe a suite of engineered wood products. ![]() ![]() “Part of the motivation is the lower embodied energy, but the key driver is that it’s a local product. “Fairbanks is a gem of a building,” said Megan Nedzinski from Vermont Integrated Architecture who designed the addition in collaboration with Engineering Ventures. “We wanted the addition to feel both current and in harmony with the original building,” he said. ![]() Kane adds that it was important for the 6,500 square foot addition to keep with the historic nature of the original building built in 1890, which has a primarily wood interior and low floor to ceiling height, requiring a relatively small structure depth. “First and foremost, part of our mission is responsibility to the natural world, so using low-embodied carbon construction materials that are sourced locally aligns well with that.” “It was a perfect fit for a number of reasons,” said Kane. Intrigued by the possibility of using mass timber, which had also been suggested by Tim Tierney at the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development, Kane decided to explore its use for an addition he was planning at the museum. That was the pitch Adam Kane, executive director of the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium, heard from McLain in 2019. “The old adage was large columns, large trees,” said Ricky McLain, senior technical director at WoodWorks, “but we don’t need to cut down large trees to make columns and beams from wood anymore.” Photos by Erica Houskeeper.Īligned with the Fairbank’s commitment to decarbonization, the new addition is the first in the world to use regional hemlock in cross-laminated timber construction.īy Christine McGowan, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund The mass timber demonstration project up at Fairbanks Museum is being built by Bread Loaf Construction.
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