It’s official. Portland International Airport (PDX) is one of the most beautiful airports on earth. That is according to judges of the UNESCO Prix Versailles competition for the World’s Most Beautiful Airports 2025, which singled out the “spectacular roof” along with San Fransico Airport’s Terminal 1, China’s Yantai Penglai International Airport, Japan’s Kansai International Airport Terminal and France’s Marseille Provence Airport and Roland Garros Airport Arrivals Terminal.
“The star of the project is its undulating mass timber roof, extending over 387,500 square feet, which celebrates Oregon’s history in forest product innovation. The spectacularly scaled structure promotes access to natural light and views of the forested landscape. (It is) a resplendently staged renovation that is both sustainable and functional.”
UNESCO Prix Versailles judges who judged that Portland’s massive timber airport as one of the most beautiful airports on earth.
The latest accolade comes just days after the Washington Post named the new airport the best in the country: “Walk into this airport terminal and gasp,” the review starts. “It’s practically a nature bath.”
Speaking exclusively to Wood Central last year, Jared Revay, the Director of Manufacturing for Timberlab, one of North America’s largest mass timber manufacturers and fabricators of the massive build, said, “The new roof is nine acres in size,” Revay said. “So imagine a nine-acre roof sitting on 34 columns. How KPFF (the engineers) figured out how to make this building stand up and then modulate it is crazy.”
“This is a hybrid roof – the steel girders are the backbone of the roof. There are steel girders every 100 feet in the centre with 80-foot beams in between them. Those steel girders sit on top of the 34 columns that support it throughout the nine acres,” he said.
Hybrid timber construction is the future of construction
According to Mr Revay, timber-and-steel construction is gaining traction in the North American market, especially in industrial projects, “because it is modularised, you get a high degree of accurate tolerances with wood, whereas steel can grow and shrink thanks to different temperatures.”
“And that was one of the aspects that helped create a lighter roof and a roof that could be stable in tolerance so that when you pull it apart, it can come back together in a very tight tolerance fashion without things growing or shrinking on themselves.”
Jared Revay on the potential for timber-and-steel hybrid timber buildings to be used as “plug and play” applictions.
Last year, Wood Central revealed that the North American mass timber market—with the correct policy settings—could grow 25-40 fold over the next 50 years, with Timberlab at the forefront of the growth. Already, it has acquired American Laminators, “one of the oldest timber manufacturers in the United States,” Revay said, with Chris Evans, Timberlab’s CEO, earlier this month revealing that new tariffs on steel could make mass timber cost-competitive in more markets.
“We’re starting to see more industrial applications (for mass timber), not only because of the tolerances and the look of wood (which is attractive to owners and architects) but also because of the idea that wood could be used as a carbon sink,” Revay told Wood Central last year. “Then there is this idea that we could build prefabricated wood buildings that can be disassembled one day and the wood used for something else. I mean, wood can last for centuries if you take care of it, right? And so it all comes down to smart design and smart maintenance.”
- Visit Wood Central’s special feature to learn more about the Portland International Airport and why it is the world’s most famous timber project. To watch Wood Central’s interview with Mr Revay ahead of the Portland International Airport opening, click here.
