UC Berkeley

From Wood to Tree explores designing with wood’s natural degradation processes. This case-study proposes a sustainable approach for reintegrating processed preprocessed lumber into forest ecosystems, highlighting the importance of deadwood in supporting nutrient cycling, fostering fungal growth, enhancing soil health and providing habitats for saplings, animals, seeds, and other living organisms essential to local forest ecologies. This design-research study establishes a framework for re-evaluating conventional approaches to material circularity, which predominantly emphasize material preservation. Instead, it proposes an alternative perspective that integrates biodegradation as a fundamental process in ecological and architectural design.