Jun 26–Sep 30, 2014

Urban Timber

From seed to city
Address
290 Congress Street, Boston MA 02210 Map
Hours
Mon–Fri 10 am–6 pm, Sat/Sun 10 am–5 pm

New England was built with timber. Were it not for the Great Fire of Boston in 1872, the urban landscape of glass, steel, and concrete that we know today might have been very different.

This exhibition will celebrate wood as the region’s most sensible and abundant choice of material for urban building while highlighting its flexibility and technical qualities, including timber's potential to combat climate change.

Yugon Kim, founding partner of IKD, Associate/Director of TSKP Boston, and co-curator of the exhibition explains “We now know that timber is a superior structural building material that should be considered alongside steel and concrete. The carbon offset and sustainability benefits of wood make it an ever-relevant and timely building material in the urban landscape."

Urban Timber: From seed to city will show that recent developments—including numerous successful implementations of timber as primary structural for midrise buildings in Europe—point to a different future.

The exhibition will include a number of case studies, examples of existing wood technology and recent material innovations in the many kinds of engineered timber available to the building industry today.

Also on display, and the result of an open competition, will be four winning projects proposed by emerging architects featuring innovative structural uses of timber. The winners collaborated with mentor architects, engineers, and material suppliers to install their unseen installations in the gallery.

The public program will include a series of collaborative public workshops and lectures will accompany the exhibition to provide extra platforms for dialogue and knowledge-sharing between key players in the industry.