About
MassTimber@MSU
Mass timber buildings are cropping up across North America, along with factories that manufacture these versatile, sustainable, engineered wood building materials. That’s because mass timber offers a compelling suite of benefits. Manufacturing mass timber can play an important role in achieving forest health management goals, contribute to rural economic development, and provide new opportunities in the manufacturing sector. For the architecture, engineering, and construction industry, building with mass timber can reduce project construction times and costs, reduce construction crew sizes and equipment needs, and create beautiful buildings that people love to work, learn, and live in. Made from a renewable resource, mass timber is less carbon-intensive to produce than other common building materials; plus, these wood materials store carbon absorbed by trees, keeping it out of the atmosphere where it would contribute to climate change.
Michigan State University is at the forefront of efforts to realize these benefits in Michigan and the Great Lakes Region. MSU built the state’s largest and most prominent mass timber building – the STEM Teaching and Learning Facility – on the site of the former Shaw Lane Power Plant, adjacent to Spartan Stadium. The two new mass timber wings provide 117,000 square feet of modern teaching labs and collaboration space.
MassTimber@MSU leverages lessons learned from building the STEM facility, along with research, education, outreach, communications, policy, and partnerships to advance sustainable mass timber construction and manufacture in Michigan and the surrounding region.
In addition, faculty in the Department of Forestry and School of Planning, Design and Construction are developing mass timber adhesives made from lignin, tools to predict construction costs and timelines for mass timber buildings, and mass timber made from salvaged lumber content in mass timber in service of MassTimber@MSU’s mission.
Michigan State University is well-positioned as a leader in advancing knowledge of mass timber construction in the United States. In order to fully understand this emerging system, our team consists of researchers from construction management, sustainable biomaterials, forestry, and community and economic development.
This enables us to understand this system from several important perspectives – the manufacturing process of mass timber materials, product improvement through enhanced materials and processes, mass timber material implementation and use in construction, contribution to sustainability goals to include green building certification and circular economy impacts, the use of salvaged materials in mass timber manufacturing, economic development and mass timber business models, sustainable forest management and wood production, and attitudes toward and beliefs about the use of these materials.
The multidisciplinary partnership at MSU is among the first of its kind, and we are very excited to be on the leading edge of this innovative material.
- Department of Forestry;
- School of Planning, Design and Construction; and
- Center for Community and Economic Development.
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