02. A Learning from the Community-Led Sustainable Woodland Management
London, UK
For my master’s project, I am working on a new way of making wood. I am hoping to disrupt the way we make timber nowadays because it is very problematic in my sense. It is not the wood that causes the problem, but more about the way we produce and process the timber.
The UK itself, generate 4.5 million tonnes of wood per year. Most of them can be recycled, the reason mainly because most of the wood that goes to the waste stream is treated in a way that it becomes unsafe to recycle such as the varnish, paint, nails, and hinges, which we put on it.
Understanding that, I am trying to look at how the timber is being resourced and what are the processes from the start of the life cycle of the material. This led me to join a volunteer work with a small sustainable community in Somerset UK, called Tinkers Bubble.
I spent 3 nights and 3 days in their woodland and living in their commune to understand their practice. Although what they do is essentially different from the way industrial woodland works, I find it important for me to see how the tree fellers work and live.
The conflict on my side happened when I was trying to understand which side I was leaning into. I come to design school because I want to be part of the coolness of doing design work for technology products. Who doesn’t want to design a supercar or a sleek mobile phone when I grew up with the rapid development of mobile phone design thanks to Nokia and Apple.
Now I am pursuing a master's, though I came with the vision to be a design for technology products, yet apparently my body and mind always drift me towards the first. But still, I am an optimist, I see there still a hope to involve technology as part of how we improve the quality of our lives, which led me to the discovery of Solarpunk.
For me now, the hope of Solarpunk is very tempting, it is selling the dream of where the advancement of technology can also be aligned towards a regenerative future if it is being used and regulated to support and respect the natural resource. Though there are no clear examples yet, many communities are trying to prototype this.
What I like about Solarpunk is the peaceful scenery those creatives made, giving me a zen feeling, seeing how harmonious life could be between nature and technology.