The Softwood Lumber Board (SLB) and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) announced the winners of the 2022 Timber Education Prize recently, a competition that supports innovative courses and curriculum to be taught at architecture schools across North America.
The prizes recognize effective and innovative instruction that create a stimulating and evidence-based environment for learning about timber. Using wood as a building material can achieve multiple design, construction, and performance objectives. Therefore, these courses equip students with the knowledge and design skills to achieve green building goals in a range of project types.
Through its education program, the SLB is dedicated to closing knowledge gaps about the use of wood products for their climate benefits, increasing wood usage, and capitalizing on emerging construction trends.
“Our funding of the 2022 Timber Education Prize supports architecture school educators who are ensuring graduates enter the profession with full knowledge of sustainable forestry, the science of wood building products, and the ability to catalyze profound innovations in architecture,” said Simon Hyoun, SLB’s Senior Director of Education.
The jury selected five courses to receive a cash prize and support to lead their courses at their host institution within the next two years. The winners were:
• Mass Timber and New England – Taught by Tom S. Chung at the Wentworth Institute of Technology. This course will give students exposure to all major elements of mass timber by investigating the material’s potential to address climate change issues and disrupt outdated construction processes through a semester-long design project.
• Mass Timber Building Systems: Architecture 595 – Taught by Paul Fast at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This course will introduce students to the technical aspects of building with mass timber, including case histories of built mass timber projects, structural design concepts, and the manufacturing, pre-fabrication, procurement, and erection of mass timber systems.
• Mass Timber Design Focus in our Master of Science in Architecture Degree Program – Taught by Judith Sheine at the University of Oregon. In concert with University of Oregon’s TallWood Design Institute (TDI), a collaboration between the College of Design and Oregon State University’s (OSU) Colleges of Forestry and Engineering that promotes environmental stewardship and economic development, this course is focused on advanced timber design and the advancement of sustainably sourced engineered timber products.
• Forest Strong: Timber Solutions for Disaster Resilient Coastal Development – Taught by Jacob Gines and Hans Herrmann at Mississippi State University. This course is focused on finding innovative ways to construct the built environment for a resilient future, specifically in the state of Mississippi, a timber state with 19.8 million acres of forested land that is prone to catastrophic weather events that impact communal and business infrastructure.
• Timber Super-Block – Taught by Nelson Byun at the Boston Architectural College. This course will explore the potentials of mass timber as a sustainable technology, capable of being a carbon sink rather than a carbon source in large-scale architecture work, and as a catalyst for novel architecture in the design of a speculative super-block complex at the Seaport Innovation District of Boston, MA.
Learn more about the competition and the 2022 winners at www.acsa-arch.org/resource/2022-timber-education-prize. The five winning course proposals will be presented at the ACSA 110th Annual Meeting in March. In addition to the Timber Education Prize, the ACSA is currently administering a student design competition called Timber in the City 4: Urban Habitats Competition. Applicants must register by April 13, and winners will be announced in the Summer of 2022.
