Maine’s First Complete Mass Timber Structure Being Built at Bowdoin College in Brunswick
Maine’s First Pure Mass-Timber Structure Rises at Bowdoin College
According to Matt Tonello, project executive at Consigli Construction, Brunswick, Maine’s Bowdoin College is soon to become home of the first complete mass timber commercial structure in the state of Maine and also the first commercial structure in Maine to utilize a mass timber lateral system to resist wind and seismic loads.
Construction on the $28.5 million Center for Arctic Studies began with mobilization in March 2021 and is scheduled for substantial completion by December 2022 and final completion by January 2023.
The 46,000-sq-ft, two-building project includes the three-story Gibbons Center for Arctic Studies with six offices, several classrooms, an archaeology lab and two gallery spaces to house the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum collection.
Lauren Pipho of HGA architects, the structural engineer for the project, says the decision to use a mass timber lateral system to resist wind and seismic loads was more of a logistics decision than a performance one. The team began with masonry shear walls in early design, but “determined that CLT shear walls would be significantly faster to install and require much less labor,” she says.
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