'White Wood'

Here is my proposal for the featured space at Tent London 2012. The featured space is a competition which is going to be voted upon by the readers of the Tent London  newsletter, you can sign up to it here if you so wish: http://www.tentlondon.co.uk/ and if you feel like it I would welcome your vote.

White Wood: A proposal for a Tent London feature space 

“Imagine a steelworks run entirely on solar energy, producing all its own solar panels and making no noise; or a plastics factory that actually purified the atmosphere and required at most only a few hours’ human input a year; picture a fiberglass works supporting all kinds of wildlife where people drive for miles to spend a day strolling around the production unit “-(Mike Abbott)

This proposal sets out to highlight some of the beauty of the sustainable natural resource we know as wood

Greenwood is exactly as it says, wood that is worked whilst still green (unseasoned). It is an abundant  resource in the UK, which is being used in contemporary design by the likes of  Charlie Whinney, David Colwell, Sebastian Cox and Pinch.  Initiatives like Bodging Millano and The New Green Woodwork project have provided opportunities for designers to develop work with wood and ancient greenwood techniques.

White Wood will provide an intimate setting, where members of the public and design community can observe this ancient yet engaging process of taking a freshly felled unseasoned log through five production stages (split, cut, chop, shave, turn) to product.  

The space will be framed by a white picket fence and to accentuate the natural beauty of the wood, everything within the space will be white, the logs, tools, clothing and equipment, creating a blank canvas. Throughout the course of the exhibition I will work the pile of logs, gradually revealing its natural colours and textures which will stand out against the white setting.

White Wood has no power requirements as all tools are hand tools.

No chemicals and no dust just fresh green wood chips and shavings.

To highlight the longevity of wood as a material, cross sections of an older tree will be on display, marked on the exposed rings will be dates relating to our recent history of technology (first publicly available computer, first mobile phone etc).

Whilst this is not going to be a comprehensive overview of greenwood techniques and processes it will be a taster, a glimpse into the world of working wood with out machines. I am not anti-machine, in fact I love CNC (computer numeric control), laser, water jet and RP (rapid prototyping) and RM (rapid manufacturing) technologies but I also love the synergy one gets with working green wood, for example, when turning on the pole lathe, as opposed to a power lathe which is basically power on/power off, the power comes from my leg and I adapt a fine micro-control constantly changing the power I put into the cutting stroke, there is an exciting connection between hand, eye, mind, and leg.


This way of working is not just creatively rewarding but makes economic sense for me as well. I can make prototypes and finished pieces on very inexpensive equipment with material which is often considered only good for the fire. By intimately handling the material, it's smells, it's changing colours and textures of course one gains a better understanding of it's possibilities.