Across the globe, many of the best emerging and established designers specify American hardwoods for their projects and pieces. From the warmer tones of walnut, cherry and alder to the lighter hues of maple, tulipwood and oak, the hardwoods form the perfect material palette for furniture, fitouts, structures, and creative projects.  The US hardwood forest continues to grow faster rate than it is harvested, the range of hardwood species are available, sustainable, and versatile in their use. 

The American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) has been a champion not only of hardwood timbers, but of the designers who use them, helping to facilitate exceptional outcomes across international architectural typologies. This series, “The Material and the Maker”, explores the close collaborative relationship between AHEC and designers over more than a decade. The series looks at collaborations in Australia and New Zealand, India, and SouthEast Asia respectively, diving into the experimental projects and creative process as material and maker collide.

Australia and New Zealand

In Australia and New Zealand’s thriving design scene, AHEC’s collaborative approach fosters an environment of innovation. Their engagements veer into the experiential, with pop-ups, design competitions, and workshops that are focused on capturing the specific vernacular of the southern countries in timber sourced from an entirely different hemisphere.

The immersive

For many of these projects, the end result is to invite both makers and users into the world of American hardwoods, drawing on the tactility and tangibility of timber to play on the senses and tell a story of versatility and sustainability. Pop Down Bar and Oak Redefined play on this immersive approach to visual narratives, with both collaborations focused on creating temporal spaces with a twist.

The former was a collaborative experiment in timber designed to showcase the shortlist for the Eat Drink Design Awards. Pop Down Bar was an ephemeral space, an activation constructed from thermally modified and natural American ash that captured the essence of Australian hospitality design. Together with Space Furniture, Architecture Media, Britton Timbers, and DesignOffice, AHEC create a space that would envelope visitors in the materiality of timber and engage them in narratives of sustainability, with the liminal space dismantled and its parts developed into furniture and also keepsakes for patrons at the event the following year.  

Oak Redefined embodied a similar approach, with furniture designer Adam Markowitz, graphic artist Marcus Piper, and manufacturer Evostyle using American red oak to construct a space to recharge, relax, and reconnect at one of Melbourne’s premium design exhibitions,  Denfair. With a goal of exploring how timber could be used within workplace environments, Markowitz designed an interactive exhibit and resting place all in one, inviting visitors to take a break on a bench or pull up a seat at the tangram table, where comfort, sophistication, and privacy are all achieved through the consistent palette of rad oak.

The reimagined

While some collaborations leaned towards the immersive, others were all about remaking and reimagining, with AHEC engaging some of the most renowned local talent to both make and remake their iconic designs using American hardwoods.

In the Replaced project, Australian design icons Anne-Claire Petre, Adam Goodrum, Adam Markowitz, Coco Reynolds, Dowel Jones, Jon Goulder, Ross Gardam, and Tom Skeehan remade some of their favourite pieces using American tulipwood. With seating, storage, and even lighting all on the construction table, the designers were encouraged to embrace the natural variation in the material.Replaced not only produced a suite of products that were simultaneously different and the same, but it became a study in how to use a sustainable material and mix Australian design typologies with an international material mindset.

Adam Goodrum was engaged again for Bilgola, a project that reimagined his original Bilgola collection using American cherry and tulipwood. As a collection originally defined by its meticulous construction and exacting simplicity, the richness and sturdiness of the hardwoods were structurally important, while the comparative softness of the timbers introduced a subtle aesthetic departure from Bilgola’s first iterations. 

“Every studio should incorporate environmental considerations into its design,” said Goodrum. “Choosing the right material is particularly important. I’m fascinated by the fact that all the wood needed for the Bilgola Limited Edition grows back in American forests in less than a second.”

The new

These collaborative material studies also have produced entirely new furniture collections and projects that explore the versatility, variety and quality of American species and encourage environmentally responsible design. 

In Seed to Seat, Adam Goodrum, Anne-Claire Petre, Ben Percy, Greg Natale, Todd Hammond, and New Zealand luminary David Trubridge each created seats from American cherry, American tulipwood, and thermally modified American ash. This intersection of local and global was brought to life through a total of 11 constructed pieces, where a combined carbon footprint of only 540 KG and an average growing time of just 0.23 seconds tells a compelling tale of new frontiers in sustainability and material procurement. 

Another Australian design icon, Tom Fereday, collaborated with AHEC for a solo exhibition, External Review. Forming part of Sydney Design Week in collaboration with the Australian Design Centre, Fereday, Evostyle and upholstery specialists, Swiss Design, the project involved a bespoke lounge crafted from American red oak, and an accompanying exhibition which explored both the material and the design process. Visitors to the exhibition were able to engage with the review, asking the question: how can we foster a sense of thoughtful, intentional and environmentally responsible design whilst championing Australian craftsmanship?

AHEC’s most recent collaboration asks this question on an even deeper level. The project – Kurunpa Kunpu Strong Spirit – was a three-year, cross-cultural design process in which three designers, Tanya Singer, Errol Evans, and Trent Jansen learnt from, and about, each other’s unique relationships with Country, family and community to create a collection that speaks to all of these. The pieces, realised in American maple, cherry and walnut, speak to the resilience of both First Nations People and ngura (Country), celebrating the potential for inter-cultural collaboration to embody diverse cultural values and lived experiences.

The hardwood materials underline a central motif of climate change and stewardship, inviting reflection on the distribution of environmental burdens and benefits and the importance of reengaging in Relationality between community, culture and Country.

Material first

Through AHEC’s extensive collaborative relationships across Australia and New Zealand, they have encouraged an approach to design that is “material first.” 

These collaborations, and their movement through the new, the reimagined, and the immersive, tell a story of alternate possibilities, where the naturally regenerating, sustainable, versatile, and beautiful American Hardwoods can perfectly complement a design vernacular that is refined, considered, and deeply authentic.