Holst Completes Mass-Timber East County Library in Gresham, Oregon

By Grace Kim

Holst has completed the East County Library in Gresham, Oregon — a mass-timber building it inherited from Adjaye Associates and steered to completion after the London firm's founder faced misconduct allegations.

The library features a trapezoidal roof structure set on a mostly square building envelope, creating multi-storey covered entry programmes on each side. Those entries are lined with massive glued-laminated (glulam) mass-timber columns, which Holst said speak to a primary effect of the design: "awe and accessibility".

"One of our major main vision points of the project was this idea of awe and accessibility," Holst principal and creative director Brittany Shreiner told Dezeen.

What does the design deliver?

The accessibility comes from dual entry programmes. One opens onto a plaza built on space taken from a converted street; the other is an elevated entryway with ramps. A rail line runs along one side of the building and a bus line along the other, tying the library into the wider public realm.

The team wanted the building to read as a "big civic moment", hence the massive columned entryway. But Shreiner said the awe the studio pursued was closer to that of a forest, and the mass timber carries that idea.

Structurally, the building mixes concrete and mass timber. It has mostly wooden floorplates and some timber walls, with concrete-and-steel cores. The facade combines vertical timber elements, high-performance concrete bands with scalloped shapes, and vertical bands of glass. At one point, a grey-toned concrete panelling system marks the semi-circular protrusion housing the building's amphitheatre.

How did Holst take over from Adjaye?

Holst served as architect of record from the start, and the completed building stays close to Adjaye Associates' original design. That changed in 2023, when a Financial Times investigation made public misconduct allegations against founder David Adjaye. The studio was released from this project, among others. Adjaye denies the allegations.

Shreiner said the biggest design changes were the removal of screens that were supposed to overhang the covered entryways and a tower that extended past the roof plane.

"There was still a lot of design to be done [at that time], but the bones of the building were there. The community buy-in was there. The stakeholder buy-in was there," said Shreiner.

"So, the county was definitely clear in their intention that they did not want to proceed with Adjaye as part of our team, and that they basically trusted us to bring the project forward, but they didn't want to see a total redesign by any means."

Where the timber shows

Holst, which recently built a tall mass-timber building in Portland, focused on optimising timber usage as it took over the design. It worked closely with local mass-timber supplier TimberLab on the materials.

One standout detail: notches in the timber columns and beams that give the structure a cabin-like, residential appearance while keeping it monumental in scale. The notches also shape the ceiling plane, hiding mechanical systems and lighting.

Inside, vestibules compress the entry sequence before it opens into a main core running between the entrances. A double-height atrium sits in the middle, complete with a wood-slatted spiral staircase. For Shreiner, that middle space represents a "clearing" in the forest.

Primary book storage surrounds the central area, with smaller breakout rooms and classrooms mostly on the perimeter. Mass-timber elements stay visible throughout the interior, and green carpets at times extend the forest metaphor. On the roof, sawtooth lightwells bring diffuse light into the central space, and a rooftop patio looks out to the mountains beyond.

The project joins a small cluster of buildings finished by other firms after the Adjaye fallout, including the Princeton Art Museum, completed by executive architect Cooper Robertson after Princeton University distanced itself from Adjaye's studio.