Delving deep into the world of wood, featuring unexpected and timely topics from across forestry, architecture and design, the award-winning podcast “Words on Wood” has returned for a fourth season! Available now on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Acast or wherever you get your podcasts, listening is as easy as asking Alexa to “Play Words on Wood Podcast”!
Developed by the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) in collaboration with Disegno, the quarterly design magazine, “Words on Wood” launched in 2021 as an upfront and wide-ranging end-to-end exploration of all things wood-related, from forestry and processing to design and disposal. In 2022, the series won the “Best Podcast” award from Architecture education platform Archiboo.
Each 30-minute “Words on Wood” episode ventures into the world’s forests, sites of timber production, and design and architecture studios to examine how multiple industries intersect through a single material. Each episode is structured around interviews with leading architects, designers, educators, manufacturers and forestry professionals who live among and care for trees on a day-to-day basis.
The first two episodes of Season 4 are available now on Spotify, Apple podcasts, americanhardwood.org and other podcast services. The fourth season opens with an in-depth exploration of an often overlooked and misunderstood timber product: veneer. Featuring contemporary designers Jorge Penadés and Rio Kobayashi, as well as Cathy Lynne Danzer of timber manufacturer Danzer, the first episode dives beneath the surface to explore the design potential of veneer and to examine how a new generation of experimental practitioners are pushing it in intriguing and playful new directions.
Episode 2 is titled “A Timber Curriculum” and looks at the education around timber and its properties. Are architecture, design and materials students learning enough about this incredible material? Judith Lösing, teacher at the AA and director of East Architecture, Kenn Busch, founder of Material Intelligence and Climate Positive Now and Hanif Kara, co-founder of AKT-II and professor at Harvard GSD join us for the discussion.
Building on the success of previous seasons’ “Tree Shorts”, this season introduces a new series of “Making Shorts”. These bite-sized episodes zoom into production techniques for timber, providing concise case studies through interviews with designers on the making processes behind specific projects. Two “Making Shorts” available now from Season 4 are “CNC Milling” and “Chainsaw Carving”, which zoom into unique production techniques and the artisans passionate about them. “Making Shorts: CNC Milling” takes us to Australia, where First Nations woodworkers and artists trace modern high-tech milling machines back to traditional hand carving methods. “Making Shorts: Chainsaw Carving” highlights Norwegian designer-maker Anna Maria Øfstedal Eng and her approach to creating furniture with a chainsaw. Recently, Anna worked with American Maple as part of AHEC’s “Three” project.
“Words on Wood” is a space for candid reflection on the challenges and opportunities of working with forests. These episodes offer multiple perspectives on how we can relate to and understand forests and the products we make from them. Offering expert science and analysis, along with industry insights and concrete design proposals, “Words on Wood” provides an accessible path to understanding the global forces shaping our environment.
I encourage you to listen to an episode during your next walk, drive or lunch break, and share with friends both in and outside of the Hardwood industry to spread the word about the global benefits of working forests. To date, there are 25 episodes of “Words on Wood”, and more episodes from Season 4 are coming soon. You can listen to “Words on Wood”, and subscribe to the podcast on Apple podcasts, Acast, Spotify and americanhardwood.org – or just ask Alexa to “Play Words on Wood Podcast”.
