Schools built with mass timber have recently opened to positive community response in the Seattle, Renton and Highline school districts, and another is under construction in West Seattle. Our kids deserve amazing places to learn and grow, and fortunately, these mass timber schools won’t be the last to be built. Throughout the United States and Canada, about 150 educational projects have already been built with mass timber.
Mass timber products such as Glulam and Cross-Laminated Timber are made from lumber stacked in layers to create large components — columns, beams and panels that become the structures of buildings of all types. These large building components drive efficiency in construction while reducing the carbon footprint. In Washington, mass timber can now be used in buildings up to 18 stories, a renewable, resilient alternative to steel and concrete.
The Pacific Northwest is well-positioned to be a leader in this industry. Not just because of our millions of acres of forests, but because we’ve already begun building out our capacity with four manufacturers. There are about 30 mass timber education projects in Washington state.
Research shows that structures made from mass timber, where the wood remains exposed, have positive effects on a physiological level, reducing blood pressure and heart rate and resulting in a feeling of calm.
An employee in the Renton School District told me, “Teachers who relocated from other schools were very excited about their space and the exposure to natural materials.” And in Seattle, “The school community and surrounding neighbors were in complete awe about the Mercer (International Middle School) building. Some felt they didn’t deserve it, and we had to reiterate that they do, and it’s their space.”
The physiological effects of gathering in a space made of wood is only one benefit of building with mass timber; others that benefit our forests include climate resilience and prevention of explosive wildfires.
Mass timber sequesters carbon. Wood is 50% carbon by dry weight; the wood in a mass timber structure stores carbon for as long as that building remains standing and the wood remains intact. This way, large-scale mass timber buildings are actually helping to transform cities into carbon sinks while we replant our forests.
Wildfire prevention is where our work at the Washington Mass Timber Accelerator offers a groundbreaking solution. Forest managers know that proactive thinning is essential to restoring forest health and reducing fuel loads, but such work costs money. Traditionally, the small pieces of low-value wood removed during thinning operations were left to rot and weren’t worth transporting. Mass timber — specifically products like cross-laminated timber and glued-laminated timber — changes this equation.
These innovative, engineered wood products can utilize that same small-diameter, salvage wood that once constituted hazardous waste. By turning this low-grade fuel into a high-value building material that is competitive with steel and concrete, mass timber creates a powerful, self-sustaining market incentive for forest restoration. Every new mass timber school built in Washington is essentially subsidizing the thinning and salvaging of our forests. It directly connects the health of our cities’ infrastructure with the resilience of our rural landscapes, making forest restoration financially viable rather than solely dependent on state and federal subsidies.
Last month, the Washington Mass Timber Accelerator secured a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Forest Service to promote and accelerate the use of mass timber in K-12 school construction. The most profound benefit of this effort is not just the beautiful, biophilic school environments it creates. It’s the essential market it establishes for the very material that is currently choking our forests and fueling megafires.
This investment by the USFS is far more than a technical push for innovative school building materials. It is a vital step toward tackling some of our gravest environmental challenges by connecting urban and rural communities in the West and building something our communities need.