Core to the messaging of the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) are its product and structural design and making showcase projects. It’s used these not just to demonstrate and develop US hardwoods aesthetic, technical and manufacturing performance potential, but to tell their wider story; to communicate their sustainability, legality and life cycle assessment credentials and to highlight the value, environmental and commercial, of using the range of US species.
Core to this activity until 2020, however, has been actual contact, between supplier, specifier and maker and ultimately with the market audience. So needless to say, the constraints of pandemic and lockdown posed a challenge.
At the start of the crisis AHEC acknowledges it considered reining in its creative ventures. But instead it decided to regroup, rethink and push ahead with ambitious international design projects. They’ve involved established creatives and emerging design talent and not only included all the challenge of previous projects, but been informed by and adapted to the exceptional global circumstances.
AHEC’s previous association with designers has created market impact and made headlines, but it describes these latest collaborations “as rewarding on a different level”. “The participants’ enthusiasm blew us away and the outcomes would have been exceptional at any time,” said European director David Venables. “In the prevailing circumstances, they’re extraordinary.”
Some of the lessons learned and communication strategies adopted in a “difficult but exhilarating year” he added would also affect AHEC’s approach for good.
The first initiative of 2020 was called Connected for a number of reasons. Launched early in the crisis, it was very much a response to the new limitations on people’s lives and work. It brought together nine designers in nine countries, eight in Europe, one in Japan. Working in lockdown, they were selected and connected remotely by AHEC and its partner on the project, the London Design Museum, and tasked with designing seating and tables they’d like to live with themselves. It was about connecting design to the times; creating furniture for the live-work spaces homes became in lockdown, plus responding to concerns about climate crisis and home health; using wood as a natural, low carbon material with increasingly appreciated well-being benefits.
The other connection was with UK furniture maker Benchmark. It brought the designs to reality, communicating with designers through the manufacturing process via FaceTime, Skype and Zoom.
The species used were cherry, hard and soft maple and red oak. The choice was in line with AHEC’s objective to encourage specifiers to select from across the US hardwood resource to ensure its long-term sustainability. While these three species have been less favoured by European designers of late, they account for around 40% of the American forest. “There’s an irrefutable environmental case for utilising a wider selection of timber and we made that from the outset,” said Mr Venables. “We have to accept what the forest provides, rather than keep consuming more of the same few species.”
AHEC also supplied the designers timber samples processed and finished in multiple ways so they did not feel constrained by how the species had been used before.
“And they rose to the occasion,” said Mr Venables. “They used the wood natural, oiled stained, painted and lacquered. Some used one species, others a blend, or combined the timber with other materials.”
Benchmark also demonstrated the timber’s machining characteristics. “It was subjected to numerous processes; from hand crafting to state-of-the-art CNC machining,” said Mr Venables. “It showed how these hardwoods enable designers to respond individually to a brief, not just aesthetically, but technically, and how, by combining material, creativity, skill and technology, anything is possible.”
The designers said they found the experience inspiring.
UK-based Heatherwick Design created Stem, an organically curving turned maple and glass desk and seating informed by biophillic design. “Connected showed what can be achieved in terms of design that responds to relevant issues,” said project leader Tom Glover. “Also, we hadn’t used maple much previously and weren’t aware it was so abundant.”
Danish designer Maria Brun created a maple desk/table and stools that could be stacked away to make most versatile use of space. “It’s exciting to know we can still create even in difficult circumstances,” she said. “AHEC’s message to use wood according to what the forest provides also added another perspective.”
AHEC was able to mount the Connected exhibition at the London Design Museum in October between lockdowns. It also took four of the creations to February’s Madrid Design Festival and hopes to tour them elsewhere. But, with opportunities for live events still limited, it also backed the project with ambitious digital communication, including a 3D virtual exhibition, designer interviews and video of the design and making process.
“This really accelerated development of our social and digital media capabilities,” said Mr Venables. “We’ve connected with such a wide audience in such a vital, immediate way, potentially taking our under-used timber species story to millions. The experience will definitely shape our communications going forward.”
One very tangible piece of evidence of this new level of market contact has been enquiries about the ‘Smile Stool’, which formed part of Spanish designer Jaime Hayon’s Connected creation. Benchmark has subsequently put it into production.
Connected, said Mr Venables, defined AHEC’s year. “It felt essential to do something that took note of the unique situation, but was also relevant to our work, creatively inspiring and forward looking,” he said. “And, of course, it’s brilliant to have iconic designers like Jaime Hayon and Thomas Heatherwick talking about US hardwood.”
The project also acted as inspiration and a stepping off point for its next collaborative venture with the global designer community, this time in partnership with design magazine Wallpaper.
Launched in October, Discovered involves 20 recently qualified designers in 16 countries. It challenged them to represent how pandemic isolation influenced their creativity in the form of furniture and other household objects and to “rethink the idea of domestic and public space for the future”.
“Talking to Wallpaper editor-in-chief Sarah Douglas about Connected, we got to discussing the situation of emerging designers, how they were particularly hard hit by the pandemic, needing exposure, but denied the platform of exhibitions and other events,” said AHEC senior marketing manager Rocío Pérez-Íñigo. “So Discovered was born.”
Once the designers were chosen by Wallpaper and AHEC, the latter ran materials workshops for them online with the project’s four regional making hubs; Benchmark in the UK, WeWood in Portugal, Fowseng in Malaysia and Evostyle in Australia. They were sent samples, plus the new AHEC species guide, which incorporates application case studies and, for the first time, also its grading guide.
“The species are once more red oak, maple and cherry and, besides their technical performance, the stress is again on the sustainable supply narrative,” said Ms PérezÍñigo. “And interestingly, we found these up and coming designers had no preconceptions about the material or saw limits to its use. It was all new and exciting.”
The participants are being guided by four designer mentors and their work will feature in an exhibition at the London Design Museum in September.
“We’re also running a digital communication campaign at least as wide reaching as Connected’s,” said Ms Pérez-Íñigo.
From rising talent, to one of the foremost names in design, AHEC is also telling the US hardwood story through the furniture concepts of Spanish architect Enric Miralles. The designer of the Scottish parliament, who died in 2000, Miralles also made furniture himself, sometimes using it to trial ideas for buildings, although it never went into production. Now, his wife and fellow architect Benedetta Tagliabue is working with AHEC, who she has partnered on previous projects, to have a selection of his tables, seats and bookcases made in maple, red oak, cherry and tulipwood.
“Benedetta is overseeing the project and selected the pieces, comprising one-offs made by Miralles and one design that was a sketch,” said Ms Pérez-Íñigo. “He was very interested in the material narrative and loved oak and she says that, given red oak’s abundance and current relatively low use in Europe, it’s one species particularly he would have selected.”
The furniture will feature in a Miralles memorial event at the Barcelona Design hub from May to August and it’s hoped later at Milan Design Week.
“It’s a snapshot of a moment in time and we’re privileged to be collaborating on it,” said Mr Venables. “It will also draw considerable attention to the importance of using these timbers.”
A further development in its unique year for communicating about US hardwoods, timber and the forest generally are AHEC’s first podcasts. Produced with design journal Disegno, the Words on Wood series at www. americanhardwood.org is described as a “deep dive into some of the big issues surrounding forests and our relationship to them”. There are four initial episodes comprising in-depth interviews with a range of experts; Welcome to the Forest , The Carbon Sink, Illegal logging and Wood and Wellbeing.
“It’s not overtly about stamping the AHEC brand, but getting the forest products voice heard,” said Mr Venables. “It’s accessible reflection on the challenges and opportunities of working with forests, how they grow, their resources and why it’s important to harvest as well as protect them.”
Podcasts, he added, will be now be another regular AHEC communication fixture.
