Advertise on podcast: Words on Wood

Building on the success of previous seasons’ ‘Tree Shorts’, this season introduces a new series of ‘Making Shorts’. These bite-sized episodes zoom into production techniques for timber, providing concise case studies through interviews with designers on the making processes behind specific projects.  In this episode, we speak with Norwegian designer-maker Anna Maria Øfstedal Eng about creating furniture with a chainsaw and her experience working with American maple in a recent AHEC project. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Building on the success of previous seasons’ ‘Tree Shorts’, this season introduces a new series of ‘Making Shorts’. These bite-sized episodes zoom into production techniques for timber, providing concise case studies through interviews with designers on the making processes behind specific projects.   Travelling to Australia, the first Making Short of the season focuses on CNC milling, tracing its connections to traditional hand carving methods. Designer Trent Jansen and Tanya Singer and Errol Evans, First Nations woodworkers and artists, explain how they employed high-tech milling machines to create a series of sculptural furniture that tell stories about the climate crisis. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Delving deep into the world of wood, featuring unexpected and timely topics from across forestry, architecture and design, the award-winning podcast Words on Wood has returned for a fourth season. A collaboration between the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) and Disegno, Words on Wood launched in 2021 as an upfront and wide-ranging end-to-end exploration of all things wood-related, from forestry and processing to design and disposal.   Venturing into the world’s forests, sites of timber production, and design and architecture studios, the podcast examines how multiple industries intersect through a single material. Each episode is structured around interviews with leading architects, designers, educators, manufacturers, and forestry professionals who live among and care for trees on a day-to-day basis. The fourth season opens with an in-depth exploration of an often-overlooked and misunderstood timber product: veneer. Featuring contemporary designers Jorge Penadés and Rio Kobayashi, as well as Cathy Lynne Danzer of timber manufacturer Danzer, the first episode dives beneath the surface to explore the design potential of veneer and to examine how a new generation of experimental practitioners are pushing it in intriguing and playful new directions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the final episode of Words on Wood season 3, we are joined by multi award-winning science and environmental writer, Fred Pearce.   Fred’s groundbreaking work covering the natural world spans at least 15 books. We sit down to discuss the topics behind his latest book, “A Trillion Trees”, which gives a fascinating insight to how the world’s forests can be restored without planting and following two key premises: ensuring that ownership of the forests is vested in the people who live in them, and to give nature room. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The series concludes by venturing into ‘The Wooden Hospital’. Starting with the work of architect Ab Rogers, who won the 2021 Wolfson Economic Prize 2021 for his radical approach towards reformulating hospital design, the episode looks at whether our existing healthcare spaces are fit for purpose. Could wood be the key to redesigns that create more humane and compassionate facilities? Featuring a group of designers and architects who are changing the way that healthcare operates, the episodes explores the role that timber can play in creating spaces that better support human health. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this bitesize episode, we explore American walnut and all of its properties and uses. The episode features an interview with Mira Nakashima, daughter of George Nakashima and now the creative director of George Nakashima Woodworkers, and gives us a valuable insight in her years of experience working with the material. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we look into the social aspects of wood and how timber education is approached across different levels: from amateur enthusiasts, through to academia and university education. This episode includes an interview with celebrated woodworker John Makepeace and Helen Welch, founder of The London Furniture School, and asks whether design education currently provides students with a sufficiently full, sophisticated picture of wood’s ecological entanglements, the variations between species, and the environmental impact of the material. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this weeks tree short, we dive into the world of white oak - one of the most popular species across Europe. Host India Block speaks to architecture practice Maccreanor Lavington to find out more about the white oak used in the newly designed Ibstock place school refractory in South West London. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In episode two, the hosts examine the different ways in which humans have baked, charred and heated wood to create thermally modified timber (TMT). The episode includes interviews with furniture designer Jan Hendzel, timber consultant and researcher Neil Summers, and architect Kirsten Haggart of architecture studio Waugh Thistleton. Words on Wood is hosted by Oli Stratford and India Block, and produced by Evi Hall. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A bitesize episode exploring American cherry and its unique role in the creation of the Susie Sainsbury Theatre by architect Ian Ritchie of ritchie*studio Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Season three of Words on Wood kicks off with an exploration of tree diseases through the lens of ash, looking into the risks posed to this tree species across North America and Europe by the invasive emerald ash borer insect and the fungus responsible for ash dieback disease. How do these threats spread through forests and affect timber and, once they have struck, what happens to the dead and dying trees? We speak to Sheridan Coakley, founder of SCP Furniture, about the recent One Tree project, challenging designers to create a piece using a felled tree suffering with ash dieback, and Emma Hudgins - an expert on invasive species. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To celebrate the launch of Perpetuum Mobile, and the return of Milan Design Week, host Oli Stratford speaks to Benedetta Tagliabue, the director and head architect of the international firm Benedetta Tagliabue - EMBT Architects. Showing as part of the INTERNI Design Re-Generation exhibition event at the Università degli Studi of Milan, Perpetuum Mobile – The Dancing Furniture of Enric Miralles & Benedetta Tagliabue’s home, brings together recreations of nine of the furniture pieces and objects that the architect designed alongside his partner Benedetta Tagliabue for their home in Barcelona, Spain. The exhibition includes tables, seating and shelving designed between 1992 and 1999, and reproduced in sustainable American hardwoods, but never put into commercial production. Although each piece is unique, they all demonstrate Miralles’ vision of the ‘house in motion’ – a domestic space in which each piece of furniture does not have a defined place or a set purpose, but can be moved or modified to meet the needs of the moment. Perpetuum Mobile – The Dancing Furniture of Enric Miralles & Benedetta Tagliabue’s home. Designed by Benedetta Tagliabue – EMBT Architects, in collaboration with Fundació Enric Miralles. Supported by the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC).   Dates 6–13 June 2022 Venue Aula Magna Hall, Università degli Studi di Milano, via Festa del Perdono 7, 20122 Milano Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.