Woodland Goods, an installation by Material Cultures for the 2024 edition of Make Good: Rethinking Material Futures, explores how design and material research can make meaningful progress towards a post-carbon built environment. Exploring the notion of value, resilience and regeneration in contemporary woodland management in the UK, the installation highlights three underused woodland resources: bark, natural glues and pine needles. The fourth iteration of this event, which opened on November 26, 2024, in collaboration with the V&A, investigated the use of natural, renewable materials in design and architecture.
The design and research studio was invited to explore how British woodlands might be able to supply the construction industry with environmentally responsible materials beyond standard processed timber. As such, they focused their research on the most common building component there is – sheet material – to explore how to make ply, composites and cladding that are free from harmful glues and plastics. The studio developed alternatives to plywood and OSB made from underused woodland resources including pine needles and birch bark.
The studio showcased new and innovative sheet materials for use in construction and product design made of sequoia, pine and birch bark that are bound together bonded using naturally occurring adhesives of those processed and derived from bio-based substances. The ply on display was made by applying heat and pressure to strips of silver birch and coast redwood bark – once the natural glues within the bark are activated, the material binds to itself to form a solid sheet.
The solid sheets were made by layering strips of bark in alternating directions before compressing and heating them. This process activates the lignin in the bark, which acts like a natural glue and binds the material to itself. The studio also experimented with bark chips and pine needles, which did not respond to heat and pressure so were instead combined with bio-resins to produce composite sheet materials. By responsibly harvesting these materials and giving them a practical purpose in construction, the studio hopes to support the creation and management of resilient woodlands capable of surviving the changes currently impacting our climate.
The bulk of the installation consisted of a dramatic spatial display of these composite materials, displayed alongside their respective raw source materials from woodlands. The display also included a modified object of furniture, which demonstrates their potential in practical applications, accompanied by a short film connecting the objects and materials to the landscapes from which they are derived. According to the studio, the cladding drew on the exceptional waterproofing properties of bark in its rawest form, straight off the tree.
These sheets, among others, sat alongside Material Culture’s pioneering experiments and demonstrate what a more environmentally mindful future could look like. Paying close attention to how we can harvest and work with natural materials in a responsible way, Material Cultures: Woodland Goods reveals the potential of woodland resources. It addresses some of our planet’s most urgent issues, such as how we can grow more resilient woodlands that can survive changes imposed by the climate crisis, how we can transition towards biodiverse, regenerative woodlands, and how we can utilize the materials that they provide us.
Material Cultures collaborated with woodland experts Evolving Forests to identify suitable tree species for the installation. In addition, fabricator Erthly helped transform the materials into products that could be used as alternatives to plywood or chipboard. According to the studio, one of the issues they identified through their research was the reliance on coniferous trees for construction, which can lead to monoculture forestry that harms biodiversity, depletes water systems and destroys native species. In response, they proposed a different approach that makes the most of the varied building materials that could be harvested from more regenerative and biodiverse woodlands.
According to the studio, these exciting materials center ecological thinking, showing how the status quo can be transformed. This project builds on the studio’s prior work, which has previously focused on using multi-species timber and hemp-based materials for projects such as an experimental low-carbon house in Somerset, England. The prototype sheet materials are being presented at the V&A until autumn 2025, alongside some of Material Cultures’ experiments and a film documenting the studio’s research.
