The Weird Wood Index is a growing compilation of buildings and assemblies that exploit unusual forest products. It is a personal research project of my own offered up here for all to use. The list prioritizes experimental constructs that use conventionally lower value products and less biomass than is common.

Hooke Park Prototype House image
Hooke Park Prototype House

ABK Architects, Buro Happold, Frei Otto @ Hooke Park. // 1986

Hooke Park Gate image
Hooke Park Gate

Andy Goldsworthy // 1986

Hooke Park Workshop image
Hooke Park Workshop

ABK Architects, Buro Happold, Frei Otto @ Hooke Park. // 1989

Westminster Lodge image
Westminster Lodge

Cullinan Architects, Buro Happold, Frei Otto @ Hooke Park. // 1997

Takasugi-an

Terunobu Fujimori // 2004

Pictou Landing Health Centre image
Pictou Landing Health Centre

Richard Kroeker (Small diameter roundwood). // 2008

Embodied Information Free Lab

Emanuel Jannasch and students @ Dalhousie School of Architecture. Free Lab // 2010

Harvesting Joints

Stephanie Cramer @ Hooke Park. // 2013

Squibb Park Bridge

Theodore Zoli (Black locust). // 2013

Bandsawn Bands image
Bandsawn Bands

Ryan Luke Johns, Nicholas Foley @ Greyshed. // 2014

Biomass Boiler House image
Biomass Boiler House

Martin Self, Sattaveesa Sahu, Yingzi Wang @ Hooke Park. (Bent douglas fir stems). // 2014

Processing Branches

Christoph Schindler, Martin Tamke, Ali Tabatabai, Martin Bereuter, Hironori Yoshida @ Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. // 2014

Tree Fork Truss image
Tree Fork Truss

Zachary Mollica, Sahil Shah, Swetha Vegesana, Martin Self, Jack Draper, Vivian Yang, Mohaimeen Islam @ Hooke Park. // 2015

Log Knot image
Log Knot

Sasa Zivkovic, Brian Havener, Christopher A. Battaglia @ Cornell / HANNAH Office. // 2018

LIMB

Peter Von Buelow, Omid Oliyan Torghabehi, Steven Mankouche, Kasey Vliet @ University of Michigan. // 2018

Vierendeel Fork Truss

Maxence Grangeot @ EPFL. // 2019

Ground to Crown Bridge image
Ground to Crown Bridge

Patrick Birch @ Hooke Park. // 2019

Woodland Cabin image
Woodland Cabin

Wyatt Armstrong, Hilla Gordon, Ciro Romer, Nasia Pantelidou, Shengning Zhang @ Hooke Park. // 2019

Woodwose image
Woodwose

Jean-Nicolas Dackiw et al @ IAAC. // 2019

Robotically-Fabricated Nexorades from Whole Timber

Aryan Rezaei Rad and others @ EPFL. // 2020

Densely-packed Timber Blocks image
Densely-packed Timber Blocks

Sebastien Birch @ Hooke Park. // 2020

Chainsaw Chair image
Chainsaw Chair

Jean-Nicolas Dackiw, Zachary Mollica, Carolina de Menezes @ Hooke Park. (Ash tri fork). // 2020

Curved Oak Lamella Prototype image
Curved Oak Lamella Prototype

Niels Martin Larsen and Anders Kruse Aagaard @ Aarhus School of Architecture. // 2020


Petras Vestartas, Yves Weinand @ IAAC. Small roundwood // 2020

Digital Blockhouse Fabrication

Lukas Kirschnick @ Bauhaus-Universit�t Weimar. // 2020

Tangential Timber image
Tangential Timber

Katie MacDonald, Kyle Schumann @ Before Building Lab. // 2021

Ashen Cabin image
Ashen Cabin

Leslie Lok, Sas Zivkovic @ Cornell / HANNAH Office. Using ash damaged by emerald ash. // 2021

Stud-A image
Stud-A

Georgina Bowman, Jacopo Silvestri, Sirisha Munnangi, Weikun Xu @ Hooke Park. // 2021

Forest Tendril image
Forest Tendril

Noah Thaddeus, Jacobo Zendejas @ Hooke Park. // 2021

Ash Ouroboro image
Ash Ouroboro

Daniel Swarovski @ Hooke Park. // 2021

RawLam image
RawLam

Thomas Svilans @ Royal Danish Academy. // 2021

Field Station image
Field Station

Romain Odin-Lepoutre, Garrett Nelli, Lin Yao, Zhu Yulin, Duan Chongyuan, Arangil Karuvadath Malavika, Zhang Zhijiao, Zhong Xiaojing, Liu Ting, Cai Hanxing @ Hooke Park. // 2022

Y-Shaped Nodes image
Y-Shaped Nodes

Caitlin Mueller @ MIT. (Tree Forks). // 2022

Inventory image
Inventory

Gil Sunshine @ MIT. Thesis project // 2022

Horse Island Research Station image
Horse Island Research Station

Alan Organchi @ Yale Building Lab. // 2022

Pikku-Finlandia image
Pikku-Finlandia

Jaakko Torvinen, Elli Wendelin, Havu Jarvela, Architects NRT, Pekka Heikkinen (Conifers with branches). // 2022

Curved Oak Lamella image
Curved Oak Lamella

Niels Martin Larsen, Anders Kruse Aagaard, Markus Hudert, Lasse Weyergang Rahbek @ Aarhus School of Architecture. // 2022

Natural Junk

Niko Fabricius @ Aalto University. // 2023

Tree and the Truss

Miguel Cornejo, Yungang Chen, James Dent, Rafael Ferres, Maisie Hoile, Guixin Lin, Joaquin Iragorri, Snigdha Pinisetti, Yiting Sun, Yifan Wang, Yiling Zhou, Wyatt Armstrong @ Hooke Park. // 2023

Wild Wood Gridshell image
Wild Wood Gridshell

Tim Cousin, Christopher B. Dewart, Latifa Alkhayat, Caitlin Mueller, Natalie Pearl @ MIT. // 2023

Bricolage Chair image
Bricolage Chair

Tim Cousin @ MIT. // 2023

Children's Forest Pavilion image
Children's Forest Pavilion

@ Neringa Forest Architecture. // 2023

Growing Bridge

@ RWTH. // 2023

Natural Tree Fork Tower Structure

Hua Chai, Xinjie Zhou, Xiaofan Gao, Qinhui Yang, Philip F. Yuan @ Tongji University. // 2023

Koueno Bench image
Koueno Bench

Lucas Hosteing @ University of Art and Design Lausanne. Furniture // 2023

Surfacing Roundwood image
Surfacing Roundwood

Kyle Schumann, Katie MacDonald, Danelle Briscoe @ University of Texas. (Irregular roundwood). // 2023

What the Harvester Leaves Behind image
What the Harvester Leaves Behind

Samantha Tam @ University of Toronto. (Conifers). // 2023

Coppice Oratory image
Coppice Oratory

ADD @ Format Engineers, Tchonova and La Roi Architecture. // 2023

Building with Misfit Wood image
Building with Misfit Wood

Jaakko Torvinen @ Aalto University. (Irregular roundwood). // 2024

Sheets and Slabs image
Sheets and Slabs

Kyle Schumann, Katie MacDonald @ Before Building Lab. // 2024

Inverting the Unwanted image
Inverting the Unwanted

Zhenxiao Yang @ Daniels. // 2024

Y Shelter

Billy Pengelly @ New Zealand. Thesis project // 2024

Branch Production image
Branch Production

Wyatt Armstrong @ ROB|ARCH 2024. // 2024

NOTES:
– The Weird Wood Index is a work in progress.
– I provide lists of authors responsible and affiliations where I have them, but am certain that projects and credits will have been missed.
– If you've contributed to a project shown and aren't noted, please write. Similarly, if you have an image of one of the projects to share that I don't have, please email these too.
– Critically, there are countless vernacular and other traditional uses of 'weird wood' that have not been included in this list. At this time I am most interested in newer applications starting around the 1980s.
– Images used have been pulled from project websites, publications and other sources – please contact me for any removal requests.