Places of Production: Forest and Factory

“Places of Production: Forest and Factory” is a new publication from the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, produced in collaboration with the Canadian Wood Council and the woodSMART Program.

The title comes from the research studio of the same name, led by Professor Robert Wright and Professor Brigitte Shim, that explored the intersection between the disciplines of forestry, architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism.

Students in the design studio used our St. Thomas factory expansion plans as a starting point for reimagining the traditionally insular factory building. They explored how it could be combined with new and innovative programs to ensure a vital future for places of production in the life of local communities.

The studio provided an opportunity for Daniels students to explore the critical and relatively untapped relationship between forestry and design. “The forest and the factory are both examples of constructed nature that speak to our contemporary attitudes towards nature and production. Each studio group provided an integrated design response to the studio brief, considering the role of the landscape and built form to develop a bold design solution that explored the role of forestry and design simultaneously,” share Wright and Shim in the publication’s introduction.

The publication is available for free on the Canadian Wood Council’s WoodSMART program’s website. The document features essays from academic and industry experts, as well as the output of the student’s collaborative semester-long research.

You can view our essay “Inciting a Mass Timber Revolution” on pages 46-49.

Download your copy of Places of Production: Forest and Factory:

https://woodsmart.ca/resource/places-of-production-forest-and-factory/

Read our original blog post about the design studio:

https://elementfive.co/a-modern-wood-design-education/