Timber City is a ground-breaking exhibition currently on view at the National Building Museum in Washington DC that examines the benefits of timber construction over steel and concrete in this era of climate change. With the built environment contributing nearly 50% of all carbon emissions, we believe that we need to reconsider how we construct our buildings.

Acting as curators, exhibition designers, and graphic designers, we were able to develop an dynamic exhibition that utilized domestically manufactured Cross laminated Timber Panels, simultaneously as architectural installation, material sample, exhibition wall, display apparatus, and wayfinding including two massive timber panels installed in the National Building Museum’s historic Great Hall. The vertical panel stands 54 feet tall, soaring to the Museum’s third floor level, and the horizontal panel is 40 feet wide.

It is an immersive installation that examines recent innovations of timber technology and explores how U.S. based timber production can help revitalize rural manufacturing communities and benefit urban centers in a wide range of ways. As the only building material that can both reduce carbon emissions and remove carbon from the atmosphere, timber is uniquely positioned to move us towards more sustainable, healthy, and beautiful buildings and cities

This exhibition unlike others at the NBM was unique in the fact that the subject matter is one at the cusp of a renaissance rather than an exhibition that is more retrospective. Set in Washington DC, Timber City aspires to be a platform to provide visual evidence to policy makers that we should return to building our cities with timber just as we did when America was founded.