Spring 2024 – here’s a basketful of new features for Annular’s on nu now pages.

Features include London CLT hipsters, dRMM’s latest addition to their timber portfolio, WorkStack, a radically cantilevered response to industrial sprawl.

Alister Peters writes about the tree miracle that was Brighton’s elm community, which astonishingly survived Dutch Elm Disease back in the eighties, while George Fereday reports on another south-eastern native species, the Sweet Chesnut, as well as his multi-year Home Grown Houses research project.

The majority of this on nu now edition, however, is given over to part 1 of Annular’s in-depth look at things timber and woody in the West Country county of Devon. There are features on EmanuelHendry Construction Carpentry, Dartington’s WoodLab, timber-framer Astrid Arnold’s ground-breaking women’s workshops and two pieces complementing the other on the resurgence of local native timber across the county. DevoniAn/nular introduces this new wave of regional timber culture for the first time.

As a precursor to Part II, there is an in-depth focus on one of the original timber framing outfits, Carpenter Oak & Woodland, there’s a feature on architect, and ex-COWboy, Cameron Scott. Part II of DevoniAn/nular is coming soon.

Stack of all trades: dRMM’s WorkStack

Surviving and thriving:  Alister Peters on Brighton’s elms

George Fereday’s HomeGrown Houses: a research overview

COMING SOON –Xylophobia; Fermynwood’s year-long virtual exhibition

Dartington’s Woodland Presents and Woodlab projects – by Al Tempest

New Natives – Jez Ralph goes local species with timber research

Devon’s new timber networks

A hundred-year history of experimental forestry – by Jez Ralph

DevoniAn/nular – part 1 overview

Pushing Devon’s timber construction envelope -EmanuelHendry

Astrid Arnold’s Touchwood South West: getting woman into timber framing

Cameron Scott – a path less travelled

George Feredayis Associate Teaching Professor at the School of Art, Architecture & Design, London Metropolitan University. His teaching and research interests include use of natural materials in construction and learning through making. His research featured at the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference, was shortlisted in the Structural Timber Awards 2022, and the  Wood Awards 2023 – a collaboration with the V&A museum, Sylva Foundation and Grown in Britain.

Alister Peters is an Arboriculturist who works with Brighton & Hove City Council on the elm disease control program and has worked with trees for virtually all his life.

Jez Ralph has been working at the intersection of forestry and timber construction for 20 years. He went on to found Evolving Forests in 2019, via the Silvanus Trust and the Architectural Association Ralph, to focus on resilient supply chains and a renaissance in wood culture in the UK.

Al Tempest is the director of Woodlab Studio and three not-for-profit organisations (The Woodland Presents CIC, Regenerative Settlement CIC and Wessex Community Assets CBS). He lives in Dartington, South Devon and has been innovating ways to catalyse eco-forestry, local supply chains and regenerative land-use for the past 15 years.

All other articles are by Oliver Lowenstein from Fourth Door

As well as the contributors, the many interviewees, and others I’ve talked with, Oliver Lowenstein would like to thank the following, without whom this edition would have never materialised. Thanks also go to Henry Russell and family, Paddy and Jeanne Pollak for helping with hosting my research visits to Devon, Milly Manley and Bryony Bodimeade for proof-reading, and George Sinclair for the web-design work. Finally, a particularly effusive shout out to Jez Ralph who made the whole thing possible.