Redmond Library

Glulam Craftsmanship Behind a Modern Civic Landmark

Location: Redmond, Oregon  Size: 38,000 square feet  Design Architect: The Miller Hull Partnership Local Architect: Steele Associates Structural Engineer: KPFF Consulting Engineers Contractor: Kirby Nagelhout Construction Company Glulam Supplier: Zip-O-Laminators

Mass Timber Procurement: Western Wood Structures DLT Supplier/Fabricator: StructureCraft, DowelLam

Installer: Northwest Framing Solutions

Project Overview

When the City of Redmond outgrew its previous library, it turned to Seattle-based The Miller Hull Partnership, working alongside local firm Steele Associates, to design a civic building that could do far more than house books. The result is a nearly 40,000-square-foot mass timber library that functions as a community living room — a space for reading, learning, making, and gathering, built to serve everyone from young children to an aging population.

Western Wood Structures (WWS) provided 2D and 3D shop drawings for all the glulam, glulam fabrication, steel, and hardware. The glulam manufactured by Zip-O-Laminators with a beautiful architectural finish all sourced and manufactured within 200 miles of the jobsite. Glulam fabrication to the 1/16” of an inch in WWS’s shop, steel fabrication, QC for test fitting, sealing of the beams with KP12.

Zip-O-Laminators is proud to have supplied the glulam beams and columns that helped bring this vision to life, working alongside DLT fabricators StructureCraft and DowelLam to deliver a hybrid mass timber structural system engineered for both performance and warmth.

A Library Redefined

"It almost becomes a community center, a spot for everyone to come to," says John MacKay, principal at Miller Hull. "One of the tricks in successfully designing today's library is making sure that everybody has a place, from the youngest kids to teenagers, young adults, adults, and an aging population. It needs to serve all people."

That ambition shaped every design decision. The two-story, open-plan library brings together flexible reading and browsing areas, children's and teen spaces, maker facilities, meeting rooms, collaborative work areas, and everyday gathering spaces, all extended outdoors through a generous civic porch. Deep canopy overhangs manage glare and heat gain so visitors can comfortably sit near the windows, while overhead skylights bring balanced daylight into the building's center.

"We presented mass timber early on, and it was a really good fit," MacKay says. "It expresses the building's community ambitions, nods to the region's forest-rich history, and delivers an inviting user experience."

Engineering the Hybrid System

The structural heart of the Redmond Library is a hybrid system pairing acoustic dowel-laminated timber (DLT) — DLT with routed voids filled with sound-absorbing insulation for built-in acoustic performance — with long-span glulam-and-steel queen post trusses on the second floor. Select concrete cores serve as the building's anchor points, minimizing overall concrete use while keeping the wood structure exposed throughout.

Zip-O-Laminators' glulam beams and columns were central to this system, engineered to work in unison with steel to achieve long spans without excess material. "In this project, we have the beautiful exposed wood structure, while also focusing on a structurally efficient and elegant engineered solution," says Kevin Nadolny, structural engineer at KPFF Consulting Engineers. "There's no excess, and I think the interplay between the materials was a highlight. The concrete cores and carefully integrated steel elements take on the work that wood does not need to do, with each material doing what it does best."

A raised access floor conceals the building's MEP infrastructure, allowing services to be routed underfoot rather than through the ceiling plane. "The whole system works together: wood and steel act in perfect unison to achieve the long span, while acoustic DLT extends across the structure and a raised access floor conceals much of the MEP infrastructure," MacKay explains. "By moving services out of the ceiling plane, we kept the overhead expression clean and allowed 80% of the acoustic DLT to remain exposed."

Built for Flexibility and Longevity

Modern libraries are no longer static, and neither is the Redmond Library's design. The raised floor allows shelving — and the power and lighting that supply it — to be reconfigured as collections, technology, and programming evolve over time.

"The wood is warm and welcoming, and brings people in," MacKay says. "At the same time, as a typology the library has changed, and it will continue to change. So one of the things that we built in was ultimate flexibility, and the hybrid mass timber structure was key to achieving that. The mass timber went beyond architectural expression and helped solve a number of technical challenges."

Precision Through Prefabrication

Delivering an exposed timber structure at this scale required close coordination from the earliest planning stages. Kirby Nagelhout Construction Company, the project's contractor, worked with the design and engineering teams every two weeks through design development and construction documents to align design intent, constructability, and cost.

"For many clients, mass timber is on their radar, but so is the assumption that they can't afford it — and some contractors without the experience may try to dissuade them from using it," says Mike Taylor, vice president at Kirby Nagelhout. "But people really love mass timber buildings. When you combine prefabrication, a faster schedule, and the fact that it's a finished material that doesn't need to be covered up, you can often make the numbers work."

The team coordinated major penetrations, lighting, sprinkler, plumbing, ductwork, and raised-floor interfaces in a 3D model well before erection, allowing openings to be cut at the factory rather than in the field. "We wanted to fabricate it all to be assembled, not cut, in the field," Taylor adds. "That led us to spend a lot of time thinking about constructability during the design phase. Then, when construction came along, it was already planned."

That planning paid off during erection. "It's amazing how quickly these mass timber panels go into place," MacKay notes. "They arrive panelized and, when you're working with large-format panels, the erection process moves very quickly."

Built for Net-Zero Performance

The Redmond Library is an all-electric building designed for net-zero energy operation, with rooftop photovoltaics sized to meet its annual energy demand. Its mass timber structure, reduced concrete use, raised access floor, and exposed structure-as-finish approach all worked together to lower embodied carbon while supporting long-term adaptability — a building designed to serve Redmond for decades to come.

Why It Matters

The Redmond Library is a clear example of how regionally sourced glulam can deliver on architectural ambition and structural performance at once. For Zip-O-Laminators, projects like this reflect exactly why we do this work: pairing precision-engineered timber products with the teams who are reimagining what civic architecture can be, using materials sourced from the forests of the Pacific Northwest.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•