PIONEERING THE POTENTIAL+ 2024 – Speakers, overview
PIONEERING THE POTENTIAL+ 2024
FURTHER – in depth and in detail information about the speakers, projects and conference context.
Pioneering the Potential+ 2024, hosted by Fourth Door, is in the fifth year of its regular Lewes events series. First initiated in 2019 to highlight and draw attention to regional Weald & Downland wood, timber and natural materials cultures, it is complemented by Annular, Fourth Door’s wood and timber culture web-portal.
On this page you will find in-depth information about the speakers, projects and the broader context regarding their participation in Pioneering the Potential+ 2024.
FRIDAY MORNING I – ARCHITECTURE, TECHNOLOGY, MATERIALS
Depot Cinema – Fergus Feilden, FeildenFowles Architects, Yannig Robert Rosny-Sous-Prefecture, Paris (France), Kate Davies & Emannual Vercruysse, Hooke Park, Sebastian Rauch, Karak, Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva, and further speakers
Fergus Feilden, FeildenFowles Architects
In Depth
Fergus Feilden is a founder and director of Feilden Fowles Architects. The architectural studio are part of a recent generation of younger practices who, over the last fifteen years, have been redefining the British architectural scene, pursuing a low-tech, crafted and authentic materials led design ethos. Working across the education, heritage, arts and cultural sectors, recent projects have included the Dining Hall at Homerton College, Cambridge, the Weston at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and the Urban Nature Project, which transforms the five acres of outdoor space around the Natural History Museum. Their current project at Black Robin Farm, near Lewes, is a new arts and education centre and eastern gateway to the South Downs National Park.
Riding on Sculpted Form – FeildenFowles’s The Weston at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Generation Game – FeildenFowles feature in this profile of younger generation studios emerging in the slipstream of Bath elders, FCB Studios.
Bio (coming soon)
Charlotte Picard and Yannig Robert – Rosny-Sous-Bois prefecture
In Depth
Charlotte Picard and Yannig Robert – Rosny-Sous-Bois prefecture – the Rosny-Sous-Bois city in Paris’s St Denis county has been pioneering a natural materials agenda across its public building estate. The city’s small architectural and engineering team have built up a national reputation for their radical building agenda, spanning passive ventilation, locally sourced natural materials - particularly straw – a conscious use (rather than overuse) of local timber, alongside working and supporting regional natural materials companies and organisations and helping build this network and its capacities. Each project features live R&D, developing their breadth and knowledge base of the built examples, with both buildings and the wider network used as active teaching and learning aids for the school’s children, who are engaged with projects.
Architect Charlotte Picard and engineer Yannig Robert are senior members in the Rosny-Sous-Bois’s prefecture’s team.
A feature on natural material designed buildings in the Rosny-Sous-Bois municipality is part of special feature section on Fourth Door’s Unstructured extra straw focused edition.
Bios (coming soon)
Kate Davies & Emannuel Vercruysse, Hooke Park
In Depth
The Field Station, Hooke Park
Kate Davies & Emannuel Vercruysse co-lead the Architectural Association’s world-renowned Hooke Park school, near Beaminster, Dorset, a 300-hectare wood which provides much of the source material for ongoing timber build experiments within the school grounds.
At the forefront of the integration of digital tech, specifically robotics and sensors in Britain, Davies and Vercruysse and Hooke Park have been developing new tech augmented roundwood design approaches for hyperlocal projects like the Robotic Woodchip Barn and the Field Station and will be showing the latest steps of this work at the conference.
Bio (coming soon)
FURTHER
The Rise of the Robots – Robotics informed architecture from Switzerland, Germany, the USA and Hooke Park, Dorset
Rowland Keable
In Depth
Rowland Keable – Britain’s leading rammed earth specialist and director of Rammed Earth Consulting, will be talking about both earth and chalk construction. As the country’s leading earth construction specialist Rowland has built many projects Britain as well as different African countries, including Zimbabwe, Zambia and Ethiopia In Britain regional projects have included Plumpton College and the Wastehouse, Brighton which features chalk walls. He has also used chalk is the core construction material at Pines Calyx, Dover, Kent, as well the WISE Building lecture hall at CAT, Wales and Cornwall’s Eden Project gateway visitor and ticketing centre. He is co-founder of the earthen construction network, EBUKI and their annual Clayfest shindig.
Thursday evening
Thursday evening Neil Sutherland, MAKAR (Scotland) Søren Linhart, SeilerLinhart Arkitekten, Switzerland, Polly and Tom Bedford, UK Hardwoods, and Robin Nicholson, Buckland Timber
Neil Sutherland, Makar, Scotland
In Depth
Neil Sutherland is a legend in the Scottish sustainable architecture and building scene. Having built up his architectural practice, Sutherland launched MAKAR, (Scots for maker-poet) expanding into pre-fabrication and building systems developed and designed for local Scottish timbers. The integrated practice and studio have designed and built many individual homes, as well as social housing, office, community and workshop buildings across Scotland and wider afield. With MAKAR Sutherland has demonstrated a model of regional building culture which is beginning to be replicated by others in the country.
Neil Sutherland has been working on developing locally sourced timber materials, building designs and architecture through much of the 20th century.
FURTHER
Timber and the new Highlands Regionalism – Neil Sutherland and his timber architecture is featured in this overview of the return of timber to the Highlands
Building Biographies – Sutherland’s Strathnairn Forest Shelter was featured in the Fourth Door curated Glasgow Lighthouse Building Biographies exhibition
Annular Archive Scottish pieces
Makar Bio (coming soon)
Søren Linhart, Seiler-Linhart Arkitekten (Switzerland)
In Depth
he Kung Holzbau office building by Seilerlinhart Arkitekten
Søren Linhart – SeilerLinhart Arkitekten - SeilerLinhart are a Lucerne/Sarnen based practice in central Switzerland. They have worked with Küng Holzbau, an Obwalden canton timber manufacturer of regional hardwoods, including Küng Holzbau’s office headquarters – above. The Canton is one of the leaders in the development of Swiss Wood, a national initiative to develop the use of regional forests for buildings, with some of the most influential companies, for instance Neue Holzbau AG and engineers, PirminJung both operating from there. Søren Linhart will speak over Zoom.
FURTHER
Ashes to Beech – how a ten-year research programme drove the return of indigenous Swiss ash, beech, oak and other hardwood’s supporting hardwood specialist like N’ Holzbau and start-ups like Fagus Suisse.
Ash Gastronomy – ash hardwood is centre-stage in Lukas Imhoff’s Ekkharthof community centre and restaurant.
Free-form swallow’s function – Unstructured extra Swiss timber engineering, materials, and architecture edition.
Switzerland – current timber architecture scene – Annular Further overview feature
Bio (coming soon)
Polly and Tom Bedford, UK Hardwoods and Robin Nicholson, Buckland Timber
In Depth
Polly and Tom Bedford, UK Hardwoods and Robin Nicholson, Buckland Timber – these specialist Devon timber companies exemplify the emerging network of regional timber operations involved in developing materials out of regionally grown native species in this instance the West Country, ranging from hardwood flooring, external cladding, and with Buckland Timber, Britain’s only indigenous glulam manufacturer. UK Hardwoods and Buckland Timber worked together on the formers bespoke recent wood storage warehouse, built from North Devon larch and Douglas Fir, the former grown and harvested by Bedford’s family, used both as posts and turned into glulam beams by Buckland Timber. The warehouse is thought to be the longest span freestanding building using British sourced glulam beams.
Homegrown timber hub finds a footing – a new chapter in the development of Devon’s regional timber network
New Natives – Woodland Trust and Evolving Forests research collaboration on non-traditional species native to Devon: Alder, Hemlock and Beech
DevoniA/nnular – part 1 of the Devon focused Annular edition.
Annular Archive Devon and South-west pieces
Bios (coming soon)
FRIDAY MORNING II – ARTS, CRAFT & DESIGN
Sebastian Rauch, Karak, Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva, Duncan Kramer, Front Yard Company
Sebastian Rauch, Karak
In Depth
Karak’s workshop – photo Hanno Mackowicz
Sebastian Rauch, Karak – Karak are one of Vorarlberg, Austria’s, new generation crafts outfits making beautiful raku tiles which can be found throughout Europe. An outgrowth from Lehmtonerde, Europe’s main rammed earth specialists founded by Sebastian’s father, Martin Rauch, Karak grew out of a collaboration between Rauch’s wife, Marta and their son, Sebastian Rauch. The Karak raku tiles feature in Lehmtonerde – and many other – projects, particularly the family’s Rauch Haus. Sebastian and his colleagues have developed a suite of geometric designs which are currently being expanded into mixed-material type furniture and other designs.
Bio (coming soon)
Karak are featured in the new Fourth Door Review, no 12 (out very soon.)
Lehmtonerde features
Working the Earth – Martin Rauch profile – Europe’s rammed earth maestro
Haus Rauch – Lehmtonerde and Karak showcase project
Gone to Earth – Unstructured extra 7 Lehmtonerde themed feature
Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva
In Depth
The Gilded Elm, Preston Park, Lewes
Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva is a Macedonian born, internationally recognised, contemporary visual artist, based in Sussex; working across sculpture, installation, print and architectural interventions. She works with a range of unusual materials, and has a recurrent focus on trees. She is also an experienced gilder. During the COVID lockdown period Hadzi-Vasileva self-initiated The Gilded Elm project in Preston Park, Brighton, turning a dead elm into a sculptural presence in the park. She is working on CUSP, her largest work to date, a timber and steel sculpture, and several other wood related projects.
Hadzi-Vasileva was commissioned by the Vatican for the Pavilion of the Holy See, at the 56th International Art Exhibition with her work Haruspex (2015) and represented the country of her birth, Macedonia, at the 55th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, with Silentio Pathologia (2013).
A landscape of trees and community – Elm specialist, Alistair Peters, on how the Brighton elm trees survived Dutch elm disease.
Duncan Kramer – Front Yard Company
In Depth
Duncan Kramer is co-founder of two related businesses Front Yard Company and Green Roof Shelters that design and manufacture award-winning nature-based solutions to common utility needs – commonly cycle parking and bin storage. Everything produced focusses on making more space for wildlife in urban spaces. Part of this involves maintaining a coppiced chestnut woodland in East Sussex (chestnut then used by Green Roof Shelters)
Bio (coming soon)
FRIDAY AFTERNOON TOUR – about Flimwell Park and Wilderness Wood
Flimwell Park
In Depth
Flimwell Park – photo Flimwell Park
Flimwell Park is an ambitious mixed-use centre and timber showcase which opened in 2022 and introduced a second major timber hub to the small village of Flimwell, after the pioneering Woodland Enterprise Centre. The extensive privately led development consists of eight ‘artisan workshops’, a gallery/café restaurant, student chalets for education and training, three private homes and a ‘focal building,’ combining events space, workshop and other facilities.
The project uses a mix of locally and regionally sourced timber – including Douglas fir and larch sourced from Southern England – and imported Estonian glulam timber and SIP cassette panels.
Flimwell Woodland Enterprise Centre – Steve Johnson was also architect on the WEC’s phases two, three and four, as well as the project architect on the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum’s Gridshell building.
Flimwell Moves On – The Architecture Ensemble’s Flimwell Woodland Enterprise Centre cruck-frame
The Making of the Downland Gridshell – Steve Johnson, Cullinan’s project architect for the Downland Gridshell, ten years on.
Annular Archive – Sussex and the South-east
Wilderness Wood
In Depth
Wilderness Wood cabin – still from Building Cabins in Wilderness Wood video
Wilderness Wood
Wilderness Wood is an experimental educational centre set in a 60 acre community woodland in Hadlow Down, East Sussex. Home to Emily Charkin and Dan Morrish, their children and a wider community, the family partnership mixes architect Dan Morrish’s passion for building low tech timber designs with Emily Charkin’s excitement at experimental schools and communities unrealised potential. Mixed age groups come together through workshops and other events which combine timber crafts, building and learning from the woods, offering young people ‘instead-of-school’experiences working across ages on real projects.
Wilderness Wood
10 Years, 10 Buildings, 10,000 Volunteers – Wilderness Wood ten years anniversary video film
Building Cabins in Wilderness Wood – Woodlands TV video
Mixed age Wilderness Wood at work and play – photo Wilderness Wood
Flimwell Woodland Enterprise Centre – Photo Theo Lowenstein/Fourth Door
PIONEERING THE POTENTIAL+2024 – WHAT IS IT AND WHY?
Overview
In Depth
Pioneering the Potential+2024 continues Fourth Door’s mission of raising awareness about the potential and prospects of regional timber and natural materials and creating a closer to nature building culture, and, alongside overlapping and related themes, placing them slap bang centre stage in front of our ‘neck of the woods’ audience.
At nearly 19% South-east England is the most wood covered part of England, and the third, after Scotland and Wales, most wood covered in Britain. In contrast to both of these, the South-east comprises mixed rather than conifer dominated woodlands, the clayey Weald primarily containing Sweet Chestnut, Scots and Corsican pine, Larch, Douglas fir, and Oak tree species.
To give a sense of the untapped potential, there are some 19, 000 hectares Sweet Chestnut across the South-east leaving an annual excess of around half a million tonnes with another 100,000 tonnes of Sweet Chestnut growing annually, without beginning to affect the existing reserve of core woodlands. Nationally, of all the UK timber harvested, 7% goes to the timber sector compared to 84% goes into biomass fuel. One final and this time regional stat: across the South-east some 174,000 ha (450,000 acres) – is delivered to the Sandwich Combined Heating Power (CHP) Thames estuary plant, as biomass to be burnt.
Alongside the woods there is a well-developed wood and timber culture in the South-east. Projects like Flimwell Park and its pioneering cousin, the Flimwell Woodland Enterprise Centre, in the east, mirrored in West Sussex by the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum’s iconic Downland Gridshell, have helped raise this regional profile. Recent new momentum, though, has been ushered in by the country’s largest timber housing project, developer HumanNature’s Phoenix neighbourhood here in Lewes, which also aims to integrate as much regionally sourced wood into the development as possible, received planning approval early in 2024.
More generally meeting Climate challenges, not least the construction sectors vast carbon footprint (generally seen as between 38-40%) is bringing biogenic and land-based materials closer to the forefront of the sector, as an effective approach at drawing down the embodied carbon while fuelling the growth of the Bio-Circular Economy.
This sea change is reflected across a patchwork of related British and European scenes and the Pioneering the Potential+ project is also about stitching the South-eastern Weald and Downland scene into the wider UK and continental communities and networks, hence – reprising previous years – this year’s guest’s bringing news of what is happening in Devon, Scotland, Paris and Vorarlberg, Austria.
We also delight in drawing together and mixing up categories. Whether architects, artists, tech folk or timber framers, crafts people, designers, foresters or sawmillers, Pioneering the Potential+ is about bringing people together and creating a clearing for open palm conversation and sympathetic collaboration. Not for us discipline enforced silos.
And finally – for now – Pioneering the Potential+ is about ways and means of drawing down carbon emissions. Is it, for example, really climate intelligent that so much of the regions wood is used for burning as biomass (a current officially prescribed carbon emission reduction strategy)? Particularly given increasingly diverse ways in which usually ignored parts of the woods – whether thinnings or waste wood – are being integrated into the materials palette in far greater proportion than before. Other scenarios, including the low to high-tech spectrum – from timber framing to robotics – need airing, discussion, and dissemination. Different pathways lead to different futures. There are wider debates to be had about our future forests – as much as our futures – and Pioneering the Potential+ provides a forum for just these issues, hopes and fears.
FCB Studios Art & Design Building – Photo Hufton & Crow
Fourth Door related pages
Earlier Pioneering the Potential+ events
In Depth
Pioneering the Potential+ 2024 is the fifth year of Fourth Door’s Pioneering the Potential events. Beginning with a first Wood Plus Day held in June 2019, Fourth Door has co-ordinated annual Pioneering the Potential events in each subsequent year, except 2020, when Covid shuttered the doors.
These have included two series of evening talks, The Xylo Sessions (2022), and Evolving the Bio base (2023), a Post-Local timber culture micro-symposium (September 2021) and its launch Pioneering the Potential Wood Day event (2019), featuring morning presentations and our inaugural afternoon a coach tour. See here for a full overview.
Annular – Pioneering the Potential is complemented and supported by Annular, Fourth Door’s wood and timber culture web-portal. Many of the links below are to Annular articles, and themed sections.
Projects
Weald
In Depth
Harbouring History and Nurturing Nature – Simpson & Brown employs local timber for their Rye Harbour Discovery Centre
Growing Flimwell’s shell structure building – Sweet Chestnut at the heart of Flimwell’s Woodland Enterprise Centre phase 1
Into Phase 2 – Douglas Fur Cruck Frames-as Flimwell WEC moves on Stealth Sustainability – Baker-BrownMcKay’s Sustainable Design’s camouflage their projects in an ecologically-hued modernism
Shorne Wood’s Sweet Chestnut Cruck Frame – a North Kent visitor centre with Sweet Chestnut at its heart
Sweet Chestnut creates a contemporary aesthetic – the Bridge community centre in Hastings deploys glulam Sweet Chestnut
& Downland
In Depth
Art Barn – FCB Studios return to Bedales school Art & Design Building connects with and breaks from its past
The Making of the Downland Gridshell – Steve Johnson, Cullinan’s project architect for the Downland Gridshell, ten years on.
Carpentry comes back – how carpentry’s craft skills returned after almost disappearing
Annular Archive – Sussex and the South-east
Woods and Trees
In Depth
The Sweetest Timber – David Saunders on the re-emergence of Sweet Chestnut as a South-east England building material
A landscape of trees and community – Elm specialist, Alistair Peters, on how the Brighton elm trees survived Dutch elm disease.
Home Grown House Sweet Chestnut prototype in the woods – Photo George Fereday
Research
In Depth
Home Grown House – George Fereday on the two-year coppiced Sweet Chestnut research he oversaw
Other
In Depth
Farewell to the local Sawmill – John Russell on the disappearance of part of the traditional timber fabric
Cluster – Anne Marie ‘O Sullivan’s art-shell basketry experiments with Sweet Chestnut timber (exhibition at Fabrica, Brighton)
Fourth Door – is a media, communications, events, and research platform, generally working in collaboration with a variety of partners. In addition, Fourth Door Research provides one-off consultancy and research.
For further information please contact Oliver Lowenstein, Fourth Door:
0044(0)1273 473501
0044(0)7527 206856
editorial@fourthdoor.org
www.fourthdoor.org
The Pioneering the Potential+ 2024 conference is supported by Eurban, Lewes District Council and Human Nature
In association with Making Lewes.
Fourth Door – Making the Connections