Legacy, a collaboration between the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) and some of London’s top cultural institutions conveyed the message of sustainability in multiple ways at the recently concluded London Design Festival (LDF), which ran from September 14 – 22, 2019. According to AHEC, in the face of global environmental challenges, any new objects we create should be designed with the intention to last and to be passed on through generations – whether to family or to an institution. The project was spearheaded by David Venables, AHEC’s European Director, and Benchmark Furniture whose Berkshire workshop made all of the pieces over the summer.

In May of this year, Sir John Sorrell CBE, Chairman of London Design Festival, invited leaders of London’s cultural institutions to collaborate with some of Europe’s most exciting designers to create a ‘legacy’ piece of design – an object of personal or professional relevance that they would like to pass on to a family member or the institution they lead. The pieces – ten in total – were all crafted using American red oak. Nine of these beautiful and thought-provoking collaborations were on show in the Sculpture Gallery of the Victoria & Albert Museum, with one piece on display outside the Natural History Museum on Exhibition Road, for the duration of LDF.

“The pieces celebrate an abundant species of hardwood, American red oak, which is an expanding resource in North America, and regenerates naturally in vast amounts. In fact, red oak makes up nearly one fifth of all hardwood volume in the American forest and even when harvesting is taken into account, the volume is increasing every year by over 21 million cubic meters – equivalent to five Wembley stadiums,” said Roderick Wiles, AHEC Regional Director. “Wood is renewable and easily recycled. It is low impact and a carbon store – each cubic meter of red oak keeps more than one tonne of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere for as long as the product is in use. Legacy aims to showcase what this timber is capable of and just how versatile and beautiful it can be.”

Dr Tristram Hunt, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, was paired with the Jasper Morrison Studio. Hunt commissioned a set of two chairs and a table, the collection is called Fugu, for the Directorate Office at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The curves and shape of the chair are a result of addressing the need for a comfortable chair made from a hard material. The details of the pieces were shaped using a woodturner, CNC cut to create a curve and then finished by hand. The large, untouched surface areas of the table-top and chairs showcase the strong grain of the red oak.

Designer Tomoko Azumi of TNA Design Studio was paired with commissioner Kwame Kwei- Armah OBE, Artistic Director of the Young Vic. Kwei-Armah wanted to create something for his garden that he could pass on to his grandson. Kwei-Armah also told Azumi that wood made him think of outdoor furniture in the Caribbean, of the slave ships that brought his ancestors from Africa to the Caribbean and the colonial ship that brought his parents to the UK. In response, Azumi created Au by using thin slats of American red oak, steam- bent into shape, to create a boat structure.

Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries, was paired with Jack Mama and Nina Tolstrup of Studiomama to create a large and a small iteration of a postbox for the Serpentine Gallery. Obrist believes in the important role postcards play in contemporary art and the revival of penmanship in the digital age. Obrist often asks artists, poets and architects he meets to write or sketch something on a postcard. He then posts it on his Instagram account, working to start a movement to save handwriting. The postboxes have fluting detail on the exterior, created with a spindle moulder on individual pieces of red oak which were then glued together. The mouth was created from a CNC-cut block of red oak.

Tamara Rojo CBE, Artistic Director of the English National Ballet, was paired with Martino Gamper. Rojo wanted a piece that reflected her life-long love of music and, practically, would work as a space to house her extensive vinyl collection. Gamper used a combination of fumed red oak to create the horizontal shelves and a lighter veneer on the upright components to create an angled grain direction, a subtle detail which reflects the oblique design of the piece.

Sir John Sorrell CBE, Chairman of London Design Festival, commissioned Juliet Quintero of Dallas-Pierce-Quintero, to create a lookout seat for the garden of his country home. The seat is shaped like a bird’s nest and will be placed next to one of the ponds facing the sunset, creating a space for contemplation and reflection. The planks of red oak were thermally modified to make the piece more durable for outdoor use and the piece was structurally engineered by Arup.

“Legacy has generated powerful messaging around the sustainability of the U.S. hardwood resource, and the aesthetic and manufacturing potential of red oak in particular. But there’s more to it than that. Legacy is a part, albeit a key one, of a wider, longer term programme. The aim is to demonstrate red oak’s technical performance through hard data- generating testing and, backed by this, to flag up its creative and commercial possibilities. Combined with studies and tools commissioned and developed by AHEC, demonstrating the legality and wider environmental credentials of U.S. hardwoods, it creates a fund of specification information for red oak arguably unmatched in any hardwood species,” concluded Wiles.