Timber City

This fall, the Museum challenges the notion that wood is an antiquated building material when it opens Timber City. The exhibition demonstrates the many advantages offered by cutting-edge methods of timber construction, including surprising strength, fire resistance, sustainability, and beauty. Drawing attention to the recent boom in timber construction worldwide, Timber City further highlights several U.S. based projects, including two winners of the U.S. Tall Wood Building Prize, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Curated and designed by Yugon Kim and Tomomi Itakura, founding partners of the Boston-based architectural design firm ikd, the exhibition’s immersive installation will feature numerous architectural models, dramatic prefabricated wood walls, and large-scale samples of engineered wood. Stories will highlight recent innovations of timber technology, especially cross-laminated timber, known as CLT, and explore how U.S. based timber manufacturing can help revitalize rural manufacturing communities and benefit urban centers. Strong and versatile, timber is also the only building material that not only reduces carbon emissions but removes carbon from the atmosphere as well, moving us towards more sustainable, healthy, and beautiful buildings and cities.

Timber City is funded in part by the USDA Forest Service and the Softwood Lumber Board. Timber City has been adapted from an exhibition organized by ikd for BSAspace at the Boston Society of Architects.