Clay Creative

Clay Creative, a mixed-use project in the heart of Portland’s Central Eastside Industrial District, is the result of a design approach in tune with both the neighborhood’s historical context and its ongoing evolution into a creative area. Integral to the building’s design, and appeal, is its heavy timber structural system. Five-stories of Type IIIA post-and-beam construction sit over a one-story, Type IA deck. The structure consists of dimension wood floor framing with plywood sheathing over vertical nail-laminated timber (NLT) decking; the decking spans between glulam beams and girders supported by glulam columns. Designers used an exterior steel moment frame to keep the core area open. Inside, they used a typical structural grid of 25x30 feet, with mid-bay beams in the long spans and girders in the short spans. Concealed steel bearing and knife plate connections attach to the exposed glulam beams with countersunk bolts for added fire protection. Sustainable design was a goal, so wood for the 90,000-sf building was locally sourced.

See the business case study for this project. The case study series aims to fill a gap in available information related to the financial performance of U.S. properties constructed with mass timber structural systems in buildings across various product sub-types. Using transparent quantitative data, each of the 10 case studies analyzes how mass timber has created value and provides a qualitative overview of successes, challenges, and lessons learned from the developer/owner perspective.