PDX Gives Airport Visitors a Reason to Look Up

Forget the carpet. The folks who run Portland International Airport want passengers to start looking up, not down.

“People still love the carpet — and we love that they love that. We also hope that they will love our roof just as much,” said Kama Simonds, a Port of Portland spokesperson.

To that end, installation began this week of a nine-acre wooden roof with mass timber components that will cover the airport’s expanded main terminal. Passengers won’t actually see the roof overhead until 2024, Simonds said. (The current stage of installation involves setting up giant support columns at the terminal.)

But the roof itself is now mostly complete.

Workers built the entire roof 13 feet off the ground on a corner of the airfield, with planes roaring overhead. They put in the wiring, the HVAC system, and the sprinklers. Next, they’ll “unzip” the roof, as Simonds put it — separating it into 20 sections that “Star Wars-like transporters” will begin moving across the airfield in September.