Knock on wood

Arkansas’ own renewable energy

THE NEWEST thing on the campus of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville may be the oldest thing in this state’s history of construction: timber. Two five-story dorms for students are to be built mainly of wood. A special wood. A thick mixture of wood pieces they call cross-laminated timber.

A golden, or rather wooden, opportunity is now staring Arkansas in the face. To quote Daniel Clairmont, the university’s director of engineering and construction, here is a way to boost this state’s timber industry and be good conservationists at the same time. “It’s an opportunity,” he says, “to maybe generate interest and kick-start investment.” Let’s seize it. To quote the university’s dean of architecture, Peter MacKeith, building these mainly wooden dorms is a project both “aspirational and inspirational—and it indicates to a regional, national and international investment pool the potentials of the state to be a leader in the rapidly emerging technology.” Which is academicspeak for Knock on Wood.

Cross-laminated timber is an alternative to steel and concrete, and experts say the wood is more friendly to the environment. It apparently creates a whole lot of greenhouse gases to make concrete. This wood, not so much.

And safety? Well, this isn’t firewood. It’s not even 2-by4s that you might find in your home. Cross-laminated timber is thick wood and it mainly chars when burned, or so those who know tell us. The state police and regulators seem comfortable with it. And this method of building is already being used across Europe. It’s not as if students in the dorms are being treated as lab rats.

Or as Mike Johnson, the university’s boss of facilities, put it, no one at the UofA thinks there’s a safety issue, “or we wouldn’t be building it to house students.”

Amazing what we can do nowadays. Let’s lead the way, Arkansas. And use what we have around us. Like all these trees.