As far as mass movement goes, you don’t want to miss it in Portland. You’ve probably never thought of mass timber. Nor does the word glulam – lightweight, extremely strong laminated wood – mean anything to you. But come to the city’s airport and you’ll find that a wave of wood of the future has just taken off, in the form of a new, corrugated roof. And its towering, elegant latticework is delighting a city that has long loved its airport (sorry, LAX).

More than a decade after the project began, Portland International Airport (PDX) last week unveiled the first phase of its highly anticipated $2.15 billion PDX Next terminal, doubling its footprint and enabling annual passenger capacity to double to 35 million by 2045. The roof was built on an on-site prefab warehouse, with the airport never closed over the past five years despite some 30,000 workers carrying out complex operations.

“You really only get one chance,” says Vince Granato, senior project manager for the Port of Portland. “This is our chance to do something really different, really big.” Portland’s urban model was not one where you “just build a brand new airport here and then take out the old one over there,” he adds. “We didn’t have that luxury.”

Reusing existing infrastructure will reduce the terminal’s energy consumption by 40%, while carbon savings from the roof could be as much as 16%. “There’s a saying that the most sustainable building is the one you don’t build, right?” says Associate Principal Jacob Dunn of Portland-based ZGF Architects, which has worked with the Port of Portland on many of the airport’s redevelopments for six decades.

The Timber Story

The concept here, Dunn says, “had to go beyond just ‘trees grow in the Pacific Northwest, so we’ll build a wooden structure.’ And that’s what we did.” ZGF and the Port of Portland visited airports from Oslo and Hong Kong to Singapore’s Changi and Madrid’s Barajas Airport, whose bamboo roof may remind visitors today of Portland.

The key was breaking down the opaque world of lumber sourcing. In fact, teams went a step further and ensured that the Douglas fir they used came from within a 300-mile radius and was sustainably harvested. Of the 3.5 million board feet for the beams, lattices and plywood, one million can be traced back to the forest of origin by thirteen local landowners, ranging from nonprofits to families. Four tribal lands included the Coquille Tribe, the Skokomish Indian Tribe and the Cow Creek Umpqua Indian Tribe, with the Yakama Nation providing the most lumber.

Normally, a log is cut down, loaded onto a truck, and you have no idea where it came from. To adapt a popular foodie phrase, the port took a “forest to lumber” approach, asking the sawmills to sort, track and trace the lumber. “Now,” Granato says, “we can bring the landowners in and show them that this is your property.”

A stress-free walk in the forest

Early on, ZGF mapped the journeys of business travelers, casual travelers, people with reduced mobility and employees to determine their needs. “How can we design the space to make the flight experience more relaxing?”, says Dunn, was the operational goal. Drawing on biophilic patterns, they developed a “forest walk” concept where “we try to make the inside more like the outside.”

According to Dunn, the terminal’s 90,000 square metres are dotted with 49 skylights coming from below, capturing curved beams that catch the light, as well as the branches of 72 trees, all in a three-dimensional field like a forest. “Just the exposure to natural wood material in an uneven pattern has a psychological effect on us.” Some skylights are frosted, with a continuous grid underneath, reminiscent of a cloudy morning in a coastal forest, for example. All of this was designed to prevent ticket agents from getting direct sunlight on their monitors.

For the 72 mature trees, including ficus and olive trees, it was necessary to work with arborists to simulate how much garden lighting would be needed in addition to daylight, not to mention developing a sophisticated irrigation system to ensure the trees thrive.

Not only do you need to keep aircraft noise out of a terminal, you also need a well-absorbing environment for intelligible announcements. To this end, the grid ceiling system can capture sound upwards, where it bounces back and forth, refracting and scattering.

“We have a lot more hard surfaces than ever before,” Granato says, which makes moving wheelchairs and rolling suitcases more comfortable. A floor made of terrazzo and sustainably harvested oak has a wave pattern that you can follow in the direction you’re supposed to go. The entire terminal also has an electric geothermal system.

To further reduce passenger stress, two giant video walls show scenes of crashing waves on the Oregon coast, the Columbia River Gorge, the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon and desert areas without commercials or sound. The system detects the time of day and year and plays the scenes accordingly.

Major new works in the PDX art program include Yoonhee Choi’s two 56-foot-long by 11-foot-high glass walls of mixed-media collages in the pre-security area. In the post-security area, two sculptures by Sanford Biggers based on his quilt work hang from the ceiling.

A travel destination in itself

If you’re of a certain age, you remember the days at the airport when you could sit and wave goodbye to your grandparents as they flew away. Portlanders have long enjoyed getting out and about, and with 30% of local concessions located in the new market hall before security, they have more incentive than ever. Perched atop the oak seats in the auditorium, Loyal Legion beer hall offers great views of the airfield while passengers wait for their families.

The typical cheap chain stores are also gone. Only local vendors remain, such as Missionary Chocolates, Freeland Spirits, the small Orox Leather Co. with roots in Mexico, and the iconic wholesalers Pendleton and Powell’s Books. A few prime locations with flexible layouts are rotated every year to give small businesses a chance. “We have street prices,” Granato adds. “You’re not being ripped off. You pay what the retail stores in town charge, and we monitor that.”

Additional amenities

That agony of going through TSA and being stuck behind the clown who only takes out all his devices at the last minute is now over. With 3D scanning, you don’t have to take out your electronic devices. Commonly used automated security checkpoints in Europe have stacking trays that feed right back into the system to keep things moving. Another aspect of biophilic stress reduction is the high ceiling height so passengers don’t feel cramped and can enjoy the view of the wooden environment beyond. Robotic mobile inspection tables reduce the number of injuries to TSA agents during baggage handling. Even the passenger repacking tables have scales.

Among the models and mock-ups created by small local studio Superfab are TSA screening rooms made from wood sourced from the Cow Creek Native American tribe. The four rooms could pass as spa treatment rooms. Just don’t ask your TSA agent for flavored cucumber water.

Mosaic tiles for the bathrooms were supplied by local, woman-owned Prestige Tile & Stone. Phase two will create all-user restrooms with cascading planters beneath huge oval skylights. “They’re going to be pretty spectacular bathrooms that you won’t see anywhere else,” Granato says.

Past and future

The airport team was smart enough to rework some parts of PDX’s popular ’80s carpet, which has become famous on social media and “looks a little bit like Space Invaders,” Granato says. When they took it out a while ago, he got an email every time someone signed a petition against the objection.

It’s hard to predict how the passenger experience will change, but it will. Because there are very few fixed points in the open terminal other than the 34 Y-pillars, the design is flexible to accommodate future capacity needs. Built just across the river, these Y-pillars support the 18 million pound roof and can withstand a magnitude 9.0 earthquake. After numerous fire modeling tests, the port received approval to forego ugly fire protection measures and leave the steel exposed. The 55-foot-tall pillars, which essentially mimic trees, are another beautiful element.

ZGF Architects has completed many exciting timber construction projects recently and has more planned. They have completed a training center for the San Antonio Spurs in time for the arrival of outstanding NBA star Victor Wembanyama. In Barcelona, ​​their design for the upcoming Mercat del Peix research center promises a breathtaking science laboratory.

Back in Portland, the second phase of the PDX Next project is scheduled to be completed in 2026 and will add exit lanes on the north and south sides of the terminal.

So come to Portland and breathe in the new car smell with its woody scent of the PDX terminal. And now is your chance to think more deeply about where all the wood around you comes from.

Extra: Want to know about cool technical stuff? In this video, the architects from ZGF and the structural engineers from Hoffman Skanska talk about the project and show the massive work that goes into rolling the modular wooden roof sections from the construction site and putting them in place with greased sliders: