UMass Opens ‘Landmark’ Timber Building

Green Building Advisor’s Scott Gibson reports that a new building at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst made of cross-laminated timber opened its door last month. It’s been called the most advanced cross-laminated timber structure in the U.S. It has an exposed glulam frame, cross-laminated timber and concrete composite floors, and other CLT components. The building contains 70,000 cubic feet of wood and avoided 2,300 metric tons of carbon emissions during construction as compared to a concrete-and-steel structure. The CLT panels came from Canada, but UMass said that its own Building and Construction Technology Department that will be housed in the new building developed some of the technology for the CLT components, and has been testing native Massachusetts species for suitability in CLT construction.

If CLT construction takes off, it could open the door for more rural jobs and better forest management in heavily forested New England states. For example, CLT building components could be made from hemlock, an under-used species in Massachusetts with low commercial value, according to a European consulting company that studied the potential of CLT construction in the New England.