flexiblefullpage
billboard
interstitial1
catfish1
Currently Reading

Life-size Noah’s Ark uses 3.1 million board feet of timber

Religious Facilities

Life-size Noah’s Ark uses 3.1 million board feet of timber

Ark Encounter, the largest timber-framed structure in the world, opened in Kentucky.


By Mike Chamernik, Associate Editor | July 12, 2016

Ark Encounter. Photo and video courtesy Ark Encounter.

A new to-scale replica of Noah's Ark will not need to survive another Great Flood. It is big enough, though, to probably hold two of every animal.

Ark Encounter, a historical museum dedicated to the legendary Bible story, was built to the size specified in scripture: 510 feet long, 86 feet wide, and 94 feet high. It is be the largest timber-framed structure in the world, according to its designers and developers. The Ark, which opened last week in Williamstown, Ky., can hold up to 10,000 people (the plan is to limit the capacity to 3,000, though), and a 1,600-seat restaurant is being set up on the top deck.

The project cost $100 million and took a little more than one year to build. The timber frame construction designed and supplied by Colorado Timberframe. The Ark required 3.1 million board feet of timber, and more than 1.2 million board feet of square timbers were needed for the frame itself.

As much reclaimed timber was used as possible, including a few of the 50-foot Engelmann spruce logs at the Ark’s center. 

“Wood is such a versatile product,” Keenan Tompkins, owner of Colorado Timberframe, said in a statement. “If you look back through history, there are plenty of examples of extremely large structures, some of which are even still standing today. So it’s kind of going back to incorporating and using that, but applying it in a modern context and having it meet the modern engineering standards that we have today.”

Construction crews included 10 workers on site in Williamstown, 25 builders in a workshop in Denver, and 75 Amish craftsmen employed by the project’s contractor.

The Troyer Group was the project’s architect, and Accoya wood was used for the exterior cladding. 

The Ark is expecting more than one million visitors during its first year.

 

Ark Encounter during construction. Click to enlarge.

Related Stories

Architects | Feb 11, 2015

Shortlist for 2015 Mies van der Rohe Award announced

Copenhagen, Berlin, and Rotterdam are the cities where most of the shortlisted works have been built. 

| Jan 19, 2015

Gaudi’s first work outside Spain will be a chapel in Chile

Nearly 100 years after Antoni Gaudí’s death, Chile will begin constructing a chapel using his designs.

| Jan 9, 2015

Santiago Calatrava talks with BBC about St. Nicholas Church on Ground Zero

Calatrava reveals that he wanted to retain the “tiny home” feel of the original church building that was destroyed with the twin towers on 9/11.

| Jan 2, 2015

Construction put in place enjoyed healthy gains in 2014

Construction consultant FMI foresees—with some caveats—continuing growth in the office, lodging, and manufacturing sectors. But funding uncertainties raise red flags in education and healthcare.

| Dec 28, 2014

AIA course: Enhancing interior comfort while improving overall building efficacy

Providing more comfortable conditions to building occupants has become a top priority in today’s interior designs. This course is worth 1.0 AIA LU/HSW.

| Dec 2, 2014

Nonresidential construction spending rebounds in October

This month's increase in nonresidential construction spending is far more consistent with the anecdotal information floating around the industry, says ABC's Chief Economist Anirban Basu.

| Oct 23, 2014

Santiago Calatrava-designed church breaks ground in Lower Manhattan

Saturday marked the public "ground blessing" ceremony for the Saint Nicholas National Shrine, the Greek Orthodox Church destroyed on 9/11 by the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. 

| Oct 16, 2014

Perkins+Will white paper examines alternatives to flame retardant building materials

The white paper includes a list of 193 flame retardants, including 29 discovered in building and household products, 50 found in the indoor environment, and 33 in human blood, milk, and tissues.

| Oct 15, 2014

Harvard launches ‘design-centric’ center for green buildings and cities

The impetus behind Harvard's Center for Green Buildings and Cities is what the design school’s dean, Mohsen Mostafavi, describes as a “rapidly urbanizing global economy,” in which cities are building new structures “on a massive scale.” 

| Oct 14, 2014

Proven 6-step approach to treating historic windows

This course provides step-by-step prescriptive advice to architects, engineers, and contractors on when it makes sense to repair or rehabilitate existing windows, and when they should advise their building owner clients to consider replacement. 

boombox1
boombox2
native1

More In Category


Giants 400

Top 40 Religious Facility Construction Firms for 2023

Crossland Construction, Haskell, Big-D Construction, Whiting-Turner, and JE Dunn Construction top BD+C's ranking of the nation's largest religious facility general contractors and construction management (CM) firms for 2023, as reported in the 2023 Giants 400 Report.



halfpage1

Most Popular Content

  1. 2021 Giants 400 Report
  2. Top 150 Architecture Firms for 2019
  3. 13 projects that represent the future of affordable housing
  4. Sagrada Familia completion date pushed back due to coronavirus
  5. Top 160 Architecture Firms 2021