Part 2 assistant at Scott Whitby Studio suggests a home-grown timber industry based on a vast new forest stretching up England's west side, earning an Eye Line 2025 commendation
In one of several examples of world-building in this year's Eye Line, Jack Oaten’s proposal to create a literally home-grown timber industry proposes the idea of a new national forest stretching from the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire to the Forest of Bowland in east Lancashire.
With production for the construction sector being carried out on a grand scale, Oaten suggests that ‘the sawmill will become a piece of rural infrastructure, processing timber grown in this new forest using digital methods to extract more than a traditional sawmill ever could’.
His skilled visualisations of these megastructure production facilities in the landscape suggest a form of rural metabolism, appearing atmospherically from some bucolic mist on the edge of Mortimer Forest.
Among the judges, Bo Muchemwa thought the renders ‘very tectonic’, while Mary Duggan enjoyed their ambiguity, ‘feeling as if they’re occupied while under construction’.
Meanwhile Koldo Lus Arana considered the images to be ‘in a sense conventional renders – he’s just doing it better… It’s like a utopian Cumbernauld town centre’. Samantha Hardingham agreed, adding: ‘They are very well composed as images; the angles and framing are spot-on.’