As part of Central Saint Martins (UAL) MArch Unit 3 program led by Material Cultures, “Constructive Land” examined the potential of resilient forestry practices for the British landscape, exploring materials and building systems for a new model of regenerative land management. Demonstrating that the recalibration of our landscapes away from extractive practices provides an exciting opportunity for innovation in construction, an alternative material palette of underutilized timber species and materials became the basis of our collaboration with the student research team.
Investigating and testing the production and application of these new biobased materials, a group of thirty-three MArch architecture students designed and prefabricated Clearfell House, an experimental timber structure that will facilitate teaching and community engagement with British woodlands. This forest classroom will be installed in Dalby Forest, Yorkshire, in the spring of 2024, where it will be visited by tens of thousands of annual visitors, helping to disseminate knowledge to the wider public concerning woodlands and the potential of regenerative management practices to reverse environmental damage and improve climate resilience.
The “Constructive Land” project took place in three phases. The first established the research context through a literature review, interviews with stakeholders, and visits to cultivation and processing sites. The second phase focused on fieldwork, introducing the ecological lens that would inform student engagement, and underpin the propositional outcomes that were developed, tested, and fabricated in phase 3. During the third phase, students responded to two briefs that set parallel streams of work. One stream led to the design and prefabrication of Clearfell House, while the other focused on material experimentation with climate-resilient tree species, culminating in the design and manufacture of five 1:1 fragments. As a whole, these outputs displayed outstanding precision of skills.
