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Building Better Labs with Mass Timber: Sustainability, Speed, and Wellness in Design
Mass timber is transforming laboratory design by offering a low-carbon, high-performance alternative to steel and concrete, enabling faster construction, precision-engineered research spaces, and human-centered environments that support wellness, collaboration, and sustainability
Balancing Timber, Steel, and Research Innovation: A Hybrid Approach to Lab Design
The University of Arkansas’ I³R facility combines advanced labs, collaborative spaces, and a hybrid mass timber–steel design to foster interdisciplinary research, address complex societal challenges, and connect the university with the local community and industry
University of Maine Launches Innovative GEM Research Facility
The University of Maine has broken ground on the GEM Factory of the Future, a cutting-edge research facility designed to integrate sustainable mass timber construction, AI-enabled manufacturing, and robotics within a highly precise, adaptable, and collaborative academic environment
Water Lab Combines Sustainability, Human-Centered Design to Win 2025 Design Excellence Award
The Aquon Water Research & Analysis Laboratory in Houten, Netherlands—designed by Vakwerk Architecten—won the 2025 Excellence in Sustainable Design Award for its innovative integration of adaptable, energy-efficient systems and biobased materials that prioritize both environmental performance and human wellbeing
Designing Toward Absolute Zero: Practical Strategies for Carbon-Neutral Laboratories
At the 2025 Lab Design Conference, Kristen DiStefano of Atelier Ten and Ryan Velasco of ZGF urged the industry to move beyond net zero and embrace absolute zero carbon design, emphasizing that through passive, all-electric systems, adaptive reuse, renewable energy, and carbon-sequestering materials, laboratories can lead the way in redefining sustainable architecture for high-performance environments
Lessons from a Mass Timber, Zero-Carbon Lab Design
The design and construction of Western Washington University’s Kaiser Borsari Hall, a pioneering zero-energy, carbon-neutral STEM building, overcame challenges with mass timber implementation, embodied carbon reduction, and sustainable energy strategies while ensuring flexibility, inclusivity, and long-term operational efficiency
Timber, Tech, and Sustainability: Inside OSU's Groundbreaking Research Complex
The Jen-Hsun Huang and Lori Mills Huang Collaborative Innovation Complex at Oregon State University will be the first all-mass-timber experimental research laboratory in the US that meets rigorous vibration criteria (2000 MIPS)
The Design Opportunity of Timber
Designers are exploring the use of timber for construction in research and life sciences developments