Education
SO – IL’s Williams College Museum of Art Features Mass Timber With a Twist
For more than a century, the Williams College Museum of Art has been housed in a historic red brick-clad building in the heart of the academic campus in Williamstown, Massachusetts. While the facility was extensively renovated in postmodern fashion by Charles Moore in 1977-83 and 1984-86, the museum has never had a purpose-built structure until now.
Currently under construction, the new 76,800-square-feet building is designed by Brooklyn-based SO – IL and will include galleries, dynamic classrooms, a study center, an auditorium, and a café organized as individual pavilions around a central space. Most of the functions are located on a single floor under an undulating metal shingle-clad roof that will define the building presence on a prominent site at the entrance to Williamstown. “The initial concept was this unifying roof that brought together a diverse set of programs that was informed by the fact that as a one-story building, there are many different heights below it,” SO – IL Senior Associate Jonathan Molloy says.
Structurally, mass timber was an obvious choice as the building is targeting Living Building Challenge 4.0 Core Green Building Certification, which requires a substantial reduction in carbon for the superstructure. The glulam post-and-beam construction supports a CLT roof deck, but that’s where convention ends. SO – IL conceived the roof as an undulating, all-encompassing surface that gathers interior and exterior spaces under its fluid forms. These warped geometries posed a unique challenge for the structural engineers, Vancouver-based Fast + Epp.
Williams College Museum of Art
Williams College Museum of Art
Williams College Museum of Art
Warped Wood
The solution involves the first use of warped CLT panels. Warped CLT might bring to mind the 19th century development of bentwood furniture, in which wood members were bent while steamed and held in position to dry in their new configuration. But that’s not how it’s done with mass timber. CLT panels are considerably larger than a chair; eight feet by 30 feet and roughly four inches thick is the norm for a project at this scale.
The Fast + Epp engineers began their analysis by calculating how much a panel, if supported in just two or three places, would bend under its own weight. “We came to the conclusion that one guiding thing to inform the geometry was, ‘Let’s try and limit the roof curvature to however much the panel can deform at its own weight,’” Fast + Epp Partner Tobias Fast says. It was at this stage that the early participation of the fabricator, Nordic Structures, became key. “We went to their facility in northern Quebec and they built a mockup of the most warped piece of the building and it succeeded,” Molloy says.
Based on those full-scale experiments, the installed CLT panels will have a significant bend when the mass timber is installed on site this summer. “It’s somewhere [between] 16 to 18 inches difference from one corner of the panel to the other corner of the panel,” Fast says.
Williams College Museum of Art
Most of the glulam beams will be straight, although a few will have curvature in two axes. Each beam will be precisely cut in the shop as a varied trapezoidal member that will provide a flush upper surface to receive the CLT. Fast notes that the engineers have been regularly asked whether the curved elements will result in changes in tolerance. Amazingly, Fast + Epp have not varied their standard CLT specifications in the slightest: “They’re still working to the same level of tolerance and minimal waste that they would in any other project.”
Admittedly, the building’s complex geometries have added more upfront time for 3D modeling and coordination between architect, engineers, and fabricators. But the CNC milling doesn’t discriminate between geometries. “The difference between a rectangular beam and a parallelogram beam doesn’t have any impact on the fabrication process,” Molloy says. “You get the same level of precision and accuracy.”
And while the steel connections between the columns and beams will be highly varied—almost every one will be unique—the precision modeling should provide for easy assembly on site.
Williams College Museum of Art
Williams College Museum of Art
Indoor-Outdoor Connections
Like the structure, the building’s finish materials will be simple, but dynamic, with consistent elements both inside and out to underscore the continuity of interior and exterior. Walls are clad in an oversized green masonry block that will have a staggered sawtooth pattern to cast shadows and create a textured surface. Bluestone floors will be laid in a diagonal running bond. And the metal roof shingles will enhance the overall monolithic nature of the undulating surfaces. Many of the public spaces will feature the exposed wood structure.
SO – IL deploys striking forms while developing a unique application of mass timber construction at the new Museum of Art, a building whose construction will become its own work of art. The new building is scheduled to open during the museum’s centennial year, 2026-27.
Williams College Museum of Art
