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2025 Ronald McDonald House Pavilion at the International Mass Timber Conference

Portland, OR, USA · Completed 2025

Willow House pavilion assembled in StructureCraft’s shop, with CNC-carved CLT walls and people for scale.

Project facts

Event
International Mass Timber Conference 2025
Architect / collaborator
MGA | Michael Green Architecture
Project partner
Ronald McDonald House BC & Yukon
Venue
Oregon Convention Center
CLT supplier
Vaagen Timbers
Location
Portland, OR, USA
Status
Completed 2025
Our involvement
Structural engineering, detailing, CNC fabrication and pavilion construction.

Photography & imagery

Construction photography
© Graham Handford

A Tall-Timber Story at Full Scale

For the 2025 International Mass Timber Conference in Portland, StructureCraft collaborated with MGA | Michael Green Architecture to bring the structural and architectural story of Ronald McDonald House Willow into the exhibition hall. The pavilion made part of the future Vancouver residence tangible: visitors could walk around a full-scale mockup, inspect its connections and read the building’s design directly from its timber walls.

The temporary installation is a full-scale mockup of the up-and-coming Willow House residence in Vancouver.

Making the Seismic System Visible

The pavilion demonstrated the principle of coupled cross-laminated timber shear walls. Steel link beams join adjacent CLT wall segments, acting as seismic fuses within the system developed for Willow House. Exposing those connections turned a normally concealed part of a building into something visitors could study at close range. Enlarged engineering drawings, routed into black-painted timber, explained the wall anchorage, hold-downs and link-beam connections beside the physical assembly.

Structural drawings are routed into black-painted CLT beside the exposed steel link assemblies.

Architecture Carved into Timber

Douglas fir CLT supplied by Vaagen Timbers carried two complementary stories. On the raw timber faces, CNC-routed scenes of rooms, furniture and daily life introduced the future home for families seeking medical care. On the black faces, carved linework described its structural behaviour. StructureCraft’s in-house carpenters combined CNC machining with traditional craftsmanship, pre-assembling the pavilion in our Abbotsford shop before it travelled to Portland.

The architectural story is carved directly into the raw Douglas fir CLT.

From the Shop to the Conference Floor

Presented at the Oregon Convention Center from March 25–27, 2025, the pavilion gave conference visitors a direct encounter with the materials and connections behind tall timber design. The completed installation brought together the warmth of Willow House’s architectural vision and the precision of its engineering, creating a place to meet, explore the details and discuss how the larger building would be made.

The completed pavilion on the conference floor in Portland.

Project stories & further reading

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