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Forest Reframed: New Material Cultures in the Swedish Boreal Forest

Part 2 Project 2024
Joanna Lake
Royal College of Art | UK
‘Forest Reframed’ explores the relationship between the material and aesthetic cultures of Swedish timber construction and the ecological lifeworld of the North Swedish boreal forest in traditional Sami territory. The project sits within a wider critical framework calling for an awareness of the built environment’s relationship with its ‘extractive zones’; where materials are sourced and costs are borne by local communities. Focusing on the suburban terraced house as the largest typological consumer of plantation trees in Sweden, the project questions how the extractive relationship between house and forest can be subverted into one that is mutually beneficial, valuing the forest as a living ecosystem under stewardship by the Sami people.

The spatial proposition operates at two ends of the timber supply chain. Firstly as an ecological rehabilitation of forested land previously sacrificed to capitalist accumulation, and subsequently as a reimagined construction system for the terraced house which aligns itself with the capacities of landscape, supporting its health during and beyond the repair process. Subverting the historic trend of landscapes being reshaped to meet the requirements of architecture, the project instead speculates on ways in which architectural material cultures might be reformed to meet the requirements of the landscape.


Tutor(s)
Imani Jacqueline Brown
Meriem Chabani
Margarida Waco
2024
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