New timber and forest features on Annular’s nu,

Features include Molfsee open-air museum’s 100 Year Haus, where ppp Arkitekter, have remade regional thatch-barn traditions into a twenty-first century vernacular.

Two perspectives on RSH-P’s Macallan Distillery Centre in the Highlands. In High-Tech and Highlands Annular asks the distillery’s deck a true gridshell. Or not? And in Super-Horizontal, what to make of Macallan’s relation to land and landscape, and to underground earth building. From the Scottish Highlands to the Kazakh Tian Shan mountains, a report on a nomadic holidaying hub building indigenous timber geodesic structures in the country’s recently opened Kolsai Biosphere Reserve.

Waugh Thistleton’s Anthony Thistleton writes on two recent CLT books, and Bryony Bodimeade reviews Ruth Maclennon’s recent Whitechapel Gallery Treeline video installation. And from Nordic Denmark and Sweden Tom Svilans reports on his RawLam research from Copenhagen’s CITA robotics lab while Umeå University’s Ann Dolling and Elisabet Bohlin highlight their web-focused Forest Therapy work.

Molfsee Museum:
21st Century Pre-Modern: Molfsee museum’s 100 Year Haus.

Grand Huit’s Ferme du Rail:
A remarkable experiment marries permacultural urban farming principles with timber and straw construction.

Limber Lines: Ruth Maclennon’s video artwork on the tree line reviewed by Bryony Bodimeade.

High-Tech and Highlands:
RSH+P give Scotland’s Macallan whisky distillery centre a high-tech timber shell makeover.       

Domes Far From Home: Kazakhstan’s Kolsai Biosphere Reserve includes a surprise, a cluster of woody Geodesic Domes

Nordic well-being in the woods: Ann Dolling and Elizabet Bohlin writes about their forest therapy web research.

Super-Horizontal: Macallan is as much land and landscape as high tech.

Anthony Thistleton reviews two recent books: A Stage Design Primer & Blank Speculations on CLT.

Rawlam from the North:
Tom Svilans on a joint Copenhagen and Aarhus robotics research project.

Bryony Bodimeade is a writer and editor based in London.

Ann Dolling and Elisabet Bohlin oversaw the Nordic Nature Health Hub project from 2018 to 2022. The project was coordinated by the Natural Resource Institute LUKE in Finland. The work was carried out together with Centria University of Applied Sciences, Vaasa University/Levón Institute, SLU, the Norrbotten-Västerbotten Economic Association, Region Västerbotten, Umeå University, Kristinestads Business center AB and the Västerbotten County Administrative Board. The work was financed with funds from EU Interreg Bothnia-Atlantica, together with Region Västerbotten and the Ostrobothnian Federation.

Tom Svilans is an Assistant Professor at CITA, Royal Danish Academy, and was the lead researcher on the RawLam programme.

All other articles are by Oliver Lowenstein from Fourth Door

Anthony Thistleton is a co-founder and principal of the pioneering timber architectural studio Waugh Thistleton Architects who have been leading the industry away from the use of mineral-based solutions towards advanced, biogenic, regenerative materials and passive systems for the past 25 years. Established with an ethos that the means of construction should be the progenitor for their design solutions, the practice has focussed on material use and sustainability and have pioneered the use of CLT and engineered timber for two decades, leading the world in its adoption.

Alongside a big thank you to the contributors a sizeable shout out to some folks who’ve helped orient these pieces into place. These include architects Arne Lösekann, Clara Simay and Marine Kerboua and engineer Paul Edwards, and Claire Atkinson for help with actually making it to the Macallan distillery, Hugo Crabb for his web-design work and Bryony Bodimeade for her additional editorial and proof-reading assistance.

Coming Soon

Southern Sweden special. Features on Helsingborg, Malmö and Växjö.