SFASU Pineywoods Dining Hall

The Pineywoods Dining Hall is a one-story mass timber dining hall on the SFASU campus. As the school’s first mass timber building, the project celebrates the legacy of East Texas forestry through an expressive structural system of southern yellow pine. The building features multiple roof planes, sloping columns, and hybrid glulam–steel braced frames.

EQUILIBRIUM was the specialty structural engineer for the mass timber scope, leading the design of the timber package and delivering a fully coordinated, fabrication-ready digital model for mass timber supplier Mercer Mass Timber. The structure is composed of exposed glulam columns and beams supporting a cross-laminated timber roof deck, with SYP harvested entirely within 500 miles of campus.

The dining hall and pavilion integrate indoor and outdoor gathering spaces, event areas, and a variety of dining stations within a highly biophilic environment. Exposed timber inside and out strengthens the connection between structure and experience. A covered “paseo” at the main entry serves as an outdoor pedestrian mall, evoking the historic heavy-timber structures that once defined Nacogdoches.