Miller Hull Completes 100,000-Square-Foot Mass-Timber Library in Oregon

Deschutes County has a new central library, and it is built from mass timber. The Miller Hull Partnership, working with local firm STEELE Associates, has delivered the 100,000-square-foot Central Library at Stevens Ranch in Oregon, a building the architects say reimagines what a library can be.

The project opens in 2026. It stacks three stories of program under a mass-timber structure, a choice that signals where public civic construction is heading for practitioners who specify structural systems. Kevin Scott photographed the building. The Miller Hull Partnership, LLP served as lead architect and manufacturer of record.

What does the library actually contain?

The architects position the building as a container for divergent uses rather than a single-purpose reading room. According to the firms' own text, the design "brings together learning, creativity, coworking and community through a mass-timber design."

The program brief acknowledges what librarians have known for a decade: patrons no longer arrive with one shared purpose. The architects describe the range directly. "A library means something different to everyone," they write. "For some, it's a place to do research. Others come to read in peace, to write, to code, to collaborate."

That framing drove the plan. The design, in the architects' words, "acknowledges these different user groups and welcomes them all." At over 100,000 square feet, the three-story building accommodates what the firms call "the diverse experiences of modern life and learning."

Why the scale matters

A six-figure square footage is large for a county library. It places Stevens Ranch in the same weight class as major metropolitan central branches, but it serves Deschutes County, a fast-growing region of Oregon. For architects tracking public commissions, the message is that library budgets at the county level now support civic-scale, materially ambitious buildings.

The mass-timber choice compounds that signal. Timber structures in public buildings remain a minority specification in the United States. A county library committing 100,000 square feet to the method gives practitioners a completed, photographed precedent, documented by Kevin Scott, to cite in bids for other civic work.

The collaboration model also merits attention. The Miller Hull Partnership, a Seattle-based firm with a long record in Pacific Northwest public buildings, paired with STEELE Associates, the local architect. Miller Hull took the lead role. This division of labor — regional design lead plus local delivery partner — is the structure many public agencies now expect on bids of this scale.

What comes next

The Central Library at Stevens Ranch opens in 2026 as Deschutes County's new central library. Its wager is that a library can host research, writing, coding, collaboration and quiet reading under one timber roof, and that the county will keep filling all of it.