The planned Missoula, MT National Conservation Legacy and Education Center building is designed to serve as a showcase for an educational exhibit of green building technologies. The building will use many wood-based construction materials, including timber harvested using sustainable forest management practices on federal, state and private lands. Throughout the Center’s facilities, visitors will see firsthand the inventions and innovations developed by the Forest Service’s Forest Products Laboratory and the forest products industry.
The National Museum of Forest Service History, a nonprofit corporation, is exploring the feasibility of adding Cross-Laminated Timbers (CLT) to the building design. Potentially, this is an opportunity to interpret the use of a wood product new to North America and provide visitors a chance to see an active research monitoring project conducted by the Forest Products Laboratory.
Cross-laminated timber provides an innovative massive building system for single- and multi -family residential buildings, multi-storey residential and commercial buildings, buildings for business and industry, and for special applications in structural timber constructions. Cross-laminated timber is commonly applied for external and internal walls, ceilings and roofs.
The Forest Service, Binational Softwood Lumber Council (BSLC), and the USDA Natural Resources and Environment have been engaged in discussions about promoting the use of wood in non-residential buildings. The primary focus of this discussion is to explore the use of Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) as a major component of the construction materials with a secondary focus of using a variety of wood products. Given such limited knowledge about CLT, there is a strong belief that demonstrating CLT in the NMFSH’s building would provide a showcase for CLT and other wood materials and technological advances. CLT wood products have been in use in Europe, but are new to the North American market.
The Forest Service and the BSLC have agreed to meet with the NMFSH in Missoula to discuss the feasibility of using CLT products in the planned National Conservation Legacy and Education Center.