John Evelyn, 1620-1706, was a founder member of the Royal Society, a gardener and, like contemporary Samuel Pepys, a prolific diarist. He also wrote many treatises confronting Britain’s lack of natural resources, problems of pollution and the environment. He lived in a time of great excitement. It was a period of expanding capitalism, but it also invoked an unparalleled awareness and appreciation of environmental problems. War had put incredible pressure on resources, and pollution had become a concern for city-dwellers, living beneath a thick cloud of smoke.
Evelyn confronted the need for the reversal of environmental decline and proposed various means of conservation. In his book Sylva (1662), he suggests planting trees throughout the country, to restore England’s depleted forests and woodlands. He describes the “prodigious havoc” that had been generated by the thoughtless tendency to “extirpate, demolish, and raze… all those many goodly woods and forests, which our more prudent ancestors left standing”. He describes various species of trees for planting, methods of collecting, growing, caring and cultivation, and their uses.
Another key motivation for planting, which persisted until the 20th century, was to create a strategic reserve of timber for wartime. In recent times this has been less of an issue! Sylva consequently slipped into obscurity. However, while studying at the Bartlett School of Architecture I began to ask if the time was right to re-situate some of Evelyn’s ideas within contemporary debates on architecture, sustainability and our cities.
Wood remains the most sustainable and environmentally-friendly building material. However, the opposition to harvesting remaining natural forest grows stronger and the sourcing of sustainable construction materials has become an increasing concern in the UK.
Plantations
A possible solution, if we are serious in our concerns about climate change and the environment, is to promote and encourage growth of plantations from which our future supply of timber can be harvested.
My proposal explores the argument for the reforestation of land around the Thames Estuary, as a response to 4,000 years of deforestation, climate change, and the need for sustainable building materials and renewable sources of energy. It adopts Evelyn’s model of reforestation as the starting point of an integrated approach to design, beginning with the security of a local renewable resource.
My Reforestation of the Thames Estuary project proposes a reconsideration of the nation’s timber and forestry concerns, suggesting a programme which primarily provides a supply of wood for the construction industry in a future where it has become a valuable and prominent building material. But the project could also result in a valuable source of fuel. It is time for London to develop its own self-sufficient construction and energy resource.
London institute
This initiative would also include the creation of the Institute of Arboreal Science and Technology (IAST) as the hub of the capital’s plantation and timber industries. It would sit on Convoys Wharf in Deptford, once the site of the Royal Deptford Dockyard and Evelyn’s residence.
The IAST would incorporate a central processing facility and would also be a dock, receiving and distributing wood and wood products throughout the city, making the Thames once again London’s lifeline. It would also promote and advertise the use of timber as a key element in the future of the capital’s architecture.
The public timber landscape I propose would also be a place to explore the potential of woodcraft and production through educational programmes and workshops. Wood’s close relationship with architecture goes back for as long as the latter has existed and an ability to identify and empathise with it makes it different from any other building material.
Along with such symbolic, empathetic qualities, the practical and sustainable advantages of using timber are manifold, but its use as a contemporary building material in Britain remains relatively minimal. We have a responsibility to use it in building, and to further our relationship with it through innovation in architecture, forestry and technology.
Inspiration
Other European countries provide a model and inspiration. Here new and daring timber constructions have set the tone for a revival in the use of wood in construction. Now, with renewed interest in timber technology and construction in the UK, it is hoped old skills and crafts will resurface and adapt to contemporary society, while at the same time these new European skills and crafts are explored and encouraged.
Encouragingly, architects of my generation are once again beginning to understand the potential of timber and focusing their energy on its future development and innovation. I hope that this growing interest and knowledge will enable and encourage us increasingly to explore the material through our future architectures.
Whether or not my proposal is realised, my aim is also to help advance the conversation concerning the need for a deeper awareness and understanding of timber, and its possibilities in forming cities. I have only touched the surface of the material’s potential.
• Tom’s drawings of how a reforested, sustainable London may look are on the right
