​​One of the winning entries for the Conversations about Climate Change design competition run by The Building Centre in association with the Timber Trade Federation.

 

As a result of being chosen as a winner, our design proposal received funding for manufacture and was exhibited online in early 2021.
 

'Extraction' is a cylindrical column of Sapele hardwood with 194 horizontal holes drilled through the heart of it - representing the demand for timber from every country in the world. The result is a column whose structural integrity is reduced to a critical state. If we take any more timber from this column without first putting some back, it could collapse entirely. Its fragility illustrates the worldwide environmental instability that exists from the over-extraction of timber.

The greater density of extraction towards the equatorial centre of the column, and the suggestion of the felling of the tree in the column's potential to collapse, create a very direct statement about climate change and the timber industry.