Inside America's mass timber movement

this morning we are taking a look at Mass Timber it's the name for wood used to construct larger and larger buildings even high rises and airports yes high-rise buildings made not of steel or concrete but wood can something like that possibly be safe can it be sustainable long term it's a fascinating subject to to so to explore we went to the center of America's Mass Timber movement Oregon wow oh jeez that is a lot of wood walking into Portland Oregon's new airport pretty wild is like seeing a version of the future firmly rooted in the past 9 Acres over us correct all wood all W Curtis roben hold is the executive director of the port of Portland the man who's LED a$2 billion project to build this airport it's pretty exciting and you know you can start to see it all coming together now the dream is to make this more than just a place to take off or land you want people to come here just to hang out would not hurt the the idea of the space in front of us here is sort of Auditorium seating where you have more of a community space and you know how that's used we'll have to see how that plays out but it's to be more of a community space rather than a transactional space all of this is possible because of mass Timber which is not all that different than the kind of wood you find at the store except it's been bonded and pressed into huge pieces used as walls and Floors that can be installed all at once which for one dramatically speeds up construction time what is this this is cross- laminated Timber like if you went in the Lowe's or Home Depot you see all the 2x6s this is just a whole bunch of 2x6s glued together is this the future absolutely Chris Evans is the president of Timber lab one of the firms pioneering the technology Timber lab manufactured the airport's roof Mass Timber is increasingly being used in museums community centers Office Buildings even this 25 story condo in Milwaukee When you mention this to people they're like why would you build a skyscraper of wood or or of an apartment building it's going to burn down yeah that's the first reaction and honestly the first uh you know 8 years ago when I was first introduced to it on an office building that was my first reaction once you really start to understand what it is and you don't just think of it as wood you think of it as a highly sophisticated structural system that has this natural fire resist of quality to it then you start to see that oh man this is a GameChanger Timber lab says today's treated Mass Timber can be as strong as steel and more fire resistant to prove it they do testing like this never mind the aesthetic Advantage if we think about the workplace nobody wants to go to work in a 9-t acoustic tile ceiling with a bunch of cubicles and everything some version of white or or tan um out there right that's that's we want Beauty yeah there's movies based on that type of work environment damns to be ganger you going to start quoting office space or no I won't when done right Advocates say Mass Timber can be a win-win longterm for everyone you can actually look up on the roof and you can identify where each of these pieces came from it's a system called track and Trace and the folks who did it honestly it's the first time it's been done it's really astonishing I think it's something we're going to see in the future around wood and increasing use of wood it has to be more expensive that way you know we thought it was going to be a lot more expensive and I would say it was marginally more expensive but really it's worth it some critics wonder whether right now it is worth it they say too many mass Timber projects today are a form of greenwashing often relying on irresponsible harvesting methods every time I see a clear-cut site it looks apocalyptic yeah I mean and they take a while uh to to grow back to any semblance of a forest Sean Stevens is the executive director of Oregon wild he took us to a forest 90 minutes outside Portland the Timber from this site was used for a project in Washington state that was build as climate friendly was it climate friendly you really can't call clear cutting especially um at this scale uh climate friendly do you think skyscrapers made of mass Timber are a good idea can a big Mass Timber building be built and have it be green yes but right now mostly Mass Timber is being used as a way to greenwash existing bad practices critics of Mass Timber say it's it's greenwashing I wouldn't say It's greenwashing At All American forests are producing more Timber than we're consuming you know a natural part of forest growth is to have some Devastation landslides wildfires things happen where the forest regenerates and grows but this isn't natural it's man-made if you're clear cutting absolutely and I'm not a proponent of saying yes go clearcut I what I'd say is subscribing to sustainable forestry practices that are understood and and known those are in alignment with long-term Forest Health can you ensure that the timber used here in this Mass Timber is responsibly harvested absolutely yeah without a doubt the Portland airport acknowledges they did get some of their wood from smaller clearcuts which many forestry experts say are currently unavoidable but there are ways to mitigate the harm like allowing longer growth of trees doing smaller cuts and leaving a larger percentage of the trees untouched which the airport says they did as new beautiful Mass Timber structures push higher every day Builders are being pushed to Source them the right way you think this is going to be a big deal in every state there's more projects in the Northeast now than there are in the Pacific Northwest as far as like coming online or being designed and that's surprising to me I couldn't believe that and now you're really starting to see this spread across the uh the the whole country it is impressive to watch all this and there are some huge environmental benefits potentially if it's done the right way but there's a lot of attention on all this right now you've probably seen in random places these bigger buildings it's fascinating I told you I had read something about a place that was going up and saw that it was wooden thought this is odd this seems odd I thought about fire safe which you addressed the environmental concerns there are the two sides to it obviously but really interesting I wonder how high they can go that's the question there's a lot of regulations in a lot of cities right now and they're trying to move those so they slowly creep higher and higher

Channel: CBS News

Views: 376,681

Keywords: CBS Saturday Morning, CBS News, video, mass timber, america, wood, oregon, sustainable, construction

Id: Q1UXqjD_83E

Length: 7min 14sec (434 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 27 2024