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.
ABK Architects, Buro Happold, Frei Otto @ Hooke Park. // 1986
Andy Goldsworthy // 1986
ABK Architects, Buro Happold, Frei Otto @ Hooke Park. // 1989
Cullinan Architects, Buro Happold, Frei Otto @ Hooke Park. // 1997
Terunobu Fujimori // 2004
Emanuel Jannasch and students @ Dalhousie School of Architecture. Free Lab // 2010
Stephanie Cramer @ Hooke Park. // 2013
Martin Self, Sattaveesa Sahu, Yingzi Wang @ Hooke Park. (Bent douglas fir stems). // 2014
Christoph Schindler, Martin Tamke, Ali Tabatabai, Martin Bereuter, Hironori Yoshida @ Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. // 2014
Zachary Mollica, Sahil Shah, Swetha Vegesana, Martin Self, Jack Draper, Vivian Yang, Mohaimeen Islam @ Hooke Park. // 2015
Peter Von Buelow, Omid Oliyan Torghabehi, Steven Mankouche, Kasey Vliet @ University of Michigan. // 2018
Wyatt Armstrong, Hilla Gordon, Ciro Romer, Nasia Pantelidou, Shengning Zhang @ Hooke Park. // 2019
Aryan Rezaei Rad and others @ EPFL. // 2020
Jean-Nicolas Dackiw, Zachary Mollica, Carolina de Menezes @ Hooke Park. (Ash tri fork). // 2020
Lukas Kirschnick @ Bauhaus-Universit�t Weimar. // 2020
Leslie Lok, Sas Zivkovic @ Cornell / HANNAH Office. Using ash damaged by emerald ash. // 2021
Noah Thaddeus, Jacobo Zendejas @ Hooke Park. // 2021
Daniel Swarovski @ Hooke Park. // 2021
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
Caitlin Mueller @ MIT. (Tree Forks). // 2022
Alan Organchi @ Yale Building Lab. // 2022
Jaakko Torvinen, Elli Wendelin, Havu Jarvela, Architects NRT, Pekka Heikkinen (Conifers with branches). // 2022
Niels Martin Larsen, Anders Kruse Aagaard, Markus Hudert, Lasse Weyergang Rahbek @ Aarhus School of Architecture. // 2022
Niko Fabricius @ Aalto University. // 2023
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
Tim Cousin, Christopher B. Dewart, Latifa Alkhayat, Caitlin Mueller, Natalie Pearl @ MIT. // 2023
@ RWTH. // 2023
Hua Chai, Xinjie Zhou, Xiaofan Gao, Qinhui Yang, Philip F. Yuan @ Tongji University. // 2023
Lucas Hosteing @ University of Art and Design Lausanne. Furniture // 2023
Kyle Schumann, Katie MacDonald, Danelle Briscoe @ University of Texas. (Irregular roundwood). // 2023
Samantha Tam @ University of Toronto. (Conifers). // 2023
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.