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The rising popularity of mass timber products in Canada and the United States has led to a rediscovery of fundamentals among architects. Not least Indigenous architects, for whom engineered wood offers a pathway to recover and advance the building traditions of their ancestors. Because timber is both a natural, renewable resource and a source of forestry jobs, it aligns with Indigenous values of stewardship and community long obscured by the 20th century’s dominant construction practices.
For Brian Porter, principal of Two Row Architect in Ohsweken, Ontario, mass timber compels architects to relearn the art of making the most out of natural materials. “Where I come from, Six Nations of the Grand River, where we were longhouse people,” Porter said, “most of the longhouses are made out of, maximum, four- or six-inch-diameter wood poles that were bent to form structural arches.” By post-tensioning the poles, these erstwhile builders were modifying the material to take maximum advantage of its inherent strength. Cross-laminated timber (CLT), glulam, and related products update this approach, Porter suggests, because they make use of “not-so-precious, softwood species that grow quickly, putting them together in columns and two-dimensional planes.” The radial glulam structure of the Council Chamber in the Seneca Nation’s Allegany Administration Building in Salamanca, New York, exemplifies Two Row’s fusion of culturally respectful forms and new interpretations of old materials. The project was completed in 2010 with Buffalo’s Kideney Architects.