New research program explores sustainable forestry and building design

By John Perkins

What does forestry have to do with architecture? A lot, says Alan Organschi, senior critic at the Yale School of Architecture in New Haven, and director of Innovation Labs at Bauhaus Earth in Berlin, Germany. Organschi is also a design principal and partner at Gray Organschi Architecture (GOA), a nationally recognized architecture firm. 

For the past year Organschi and Andy Ruff, research director at GOA, have been working with Great Mountain Forest (GMF) here in Norfolk and Falls Village to initiate a research and design program for graduate-level Yale architecture students that uses GMF as a site for sustainable design research and education. The idea is to study best practices in sustainable architectural design in wood, as understood through following best practices in sustainable forestry. Simply put, the premise of the program, Organschi has said, is to “stop telling the forest what we want, and instead start asking what it can offer.” Rather than extracting, without regard to implications for forest health, they seek to balance sustainable practices in forestry with thoughtful architectural design.

This past autumn GMF hosted Organschi and Ruff, along with 11 graduate-level architecture students, for the studio course “Architecture 1101: Regenerative Building | Bioregional Synergies Advanced Architectural Research and Design Studio.” The students kicked off their work with a visit in early September to GMF’s Forestry Office at the East Gate, meeting with Matt Gallagher, GMF’s director of programs and operations. Students had the opportunity to see the forestry campus and operations of GMF, in addition to asking questions and exploring some of GMF’s forest trails.

Over the course of the semester the students explored wood construction ideas and techniques and their application to an imagined set of classroom and administrative spaces to serve GMF. They then began detailed research into the history and landscape of the northwest Connecticut region, and GMF specifically.

This initial work was followed by a travel-and-study week to Germany and Austria. There, students saw real-life examples of sustainable bio-based design, construction manufacturing techniques and forestry as practiced in the region. Once back in New Haven in early October, they began in earnest to integrate and translate all they had seen and heard into design ideas, culminating in final presentations of their work at Yale on Dec. 8.

GMF offers a unique example of a conservation forest that has been managed since its founding by the Childs and Walcott families, in the early part of the 20th century, as a working forest preserve. GMF utilizes sustainable forestry practices that aim to encourage forest health through carefully planned interventions to promote its long-term growth and vitality. This sustainable forestry can include occasional selective harvesting of timber to open the tree canopy for new growth and the ongoing study of individual tree species to understand their resilience and potential vulnerability to changes in climate and environment. Critically, these sustainable practices also entail the maintenance and development of key wildlife habitats that provide strength and balance to the overall forest ecosystem. All this, of course, is done in the context of maintaining the beauty and health of the forest for all of us to enjoy.

GMF has had an ongoing relationship with Yale since the 1940s, initially through Ted Childs’s donation of seven acres of GMF land to the then Yale School of Forestry (now the Yale School of the Environment), through the establishment and construction of what is known today as the Yale Camp at GMF. The expanding Yale partnership creates an opportunity to begin to build in practice what is already being explored at the university level—an emerging understanding of the relationship between best practices in sustainable architectural design and construction in our built environment and sustainable silviculture practices in forestry. GMF provides a unique laboratory to help teach the next generation of architects and foresters the essential interconnectedness of their professional decision making.

Against this backdrop of GMF’s history of thoughtful forest management, Organschi and Ruff see the opportunity to continue working together with GMF to explore and develop important new practices for architectural design, specification of materials and construction processes.

Alan Organschi will speak about his work with GMF at the Norfolk Library at 4 p.m. on Feb. 24 as a part of the GMF Winter Lecture Series.