In collaboration with the Forest Service’s Wood Innovations Program, the Fay Jones School hosted this workshop that brought together a consortium of recent Wood Innovations Grant Program recipients focused on affordable and workforce housing utilizing mass timber and other innovative wood products/by-products, along with partners in industry, real estate, government, higher education and design.
By gathering this diverse group of partners, the Fay Jones School and the Forest Service’s Wood Innovations Program hope to build a collaborative learning environment through which participants can learn from and build upon each other’s project work and experiences. The intent is to identify barriers and solutions to the design, manufacturing and construction of affordable housing, and to explore how participants can move toward a vision of sustainable, affordable housing in mass timber and other wood products. More generally, the workshop aimed to catalyze housing that is more readily reproduced, more swiftly scaled up, and economical and affordable.
“Our partnership with the U.S. Forest Service Wood Innovations Program continues to pay dividends,” said Peter MacKeith, dean of the school. “Not only has the school’s research agenda in mass timber and affordable housing benefitted directly, but we’re now also able to provide coordination and leadership to the emerging national efforts across a range of partners and allies. We look forward to further work together to address this critical issue, not only for our region but for the nation.”
