Summer Islam and George Massoud discuss their recent experiments, using timber byproducts such as bark to create additive-free ply, composites and cladding, which are on show at the V&A during 2025
The design and research organisation Material Cultures continues to challenge the construction industry through its advocacy for bio-based materials and sustainable, non-extractive land management, advanced via its teaching, research, publications and built projects.
With the opening of its new installation Woodland Goods at the V&A, which is part of the museum’s Make Good: Rethinking Material Futures programme, Material Cultures continues this line of inquiry through experiments with pine needles, and birch and redwood bark.
The show explores how sheet materials – ply, composites and cladding – might be made free from harmful glues and plastics, by applying heat and pressure to activate natural glues within the bark. Following its opening, practice directors Summer Islam and George Massoud spoke to RIBAJ about finding value in woodland waste and the challenges of industrial manufacture.
How did Material Cultures develop the waste timber materials featured in the exhibition?
Summer Islam The exhibition aligns with some of the research we’ve been doing in the office, and with our interest in woodlands and land management. The question was, ‘What could we work with that came from woodlands that wasn’t timber?’ We chose to look at waste streams coming from processing timber and ask what we could extract from woodlands without actually felling trees. It felt more relevant to look to look at trees that can be cultivated within British landscape systems, focusing on their bark, which is a waste stream during the milling process.
George Massoud We collaborated with timber specialist Evolving Forests, who we have worked with in the past and also support with some of our teaching. They helped with the sourcing and harvesting of the materials for the show. We also worked with product manufacturer Erthly, and with them we developed the sheets in the display. The brief was to heat and press them to see how we could create boards without any additional binders.
Summer Islam With Evolving Forests we initially narrowed down the list of tree species we would look at, and settled on pine, birch and redwood. Pine is prevalent in the landscape, birch has a long history of uses for its bark and is known to have high levels of lignin and sap content – you can imagine bending and heating it. The redwood is a North American tree species being grown more in the UK as a result of the changing climate. The idea was to develop sheet materials without using the adhesives and toxins that come from industrial processing and end up in our waterways and soil. A lot of the initial research was just about glue.
Material Cultures’ previous experiments with straw and hemp have more obvious architectural applications. What do you think the architectural applications of the waste wood materials explored in this exhibition are?
Summer Islam Well, we think they look very nice – but while they are set in a furniture gallery, we were thinking about construction materials the whole time. The idea with the sheet material is that it would substitute plywood and OSB, in the different ways they are used in buildings today. We are right at the beginning of an R&D process which could take years but, for example, we know that birch bark has applications in waterproofing in different indigenous building traditions across the globe. The exhibition also features some cladding typologies, introducing the idea of a rainscreen cladding made from a natural, regenerative material that is easy to maintain, replace, adapt.
George Massoud It is our first time working with bark, and we are hoping to test these cladding panels on a building and monitor it to see how it ages over time. You could also use the boards for flooring and panelling. You could probably use the sequoia as doors. The honest answer is we don’t know: we speculate on lots of things and use our intuition about how we will explore them; the reality is that to do such exploration requires a lot of investment and time.
The underlying ambition behind Material Cultures’ material explorations is to scale up their production. What are some of the challenges to the widespread implementation of these bio-based techniques and materials?
Summer Islam The immediate ones are the things that limit our ability to even test. For us to work with bark, we need it in sheets and for it to have been extracted with a certain degree of care. But the supply chains aren’t set up to value everything that comes from the tree. Bark is often used as compost or it’s chipped and turned into other stuff. Another issue is with the regulatory infrastructure: the privatisation of certification and testing in the UK has meant that the cost of getting materials like this to become suitable for industrialised production is substantial. It makes it very difficult to scale.
How do you think we can start to address the challenges to scaling up these waste wood materials?
Summer Isam Something that’s sometimes talked about is the nationalisation of certification and testing. So for instance, the Building Research Establishment used to be a public entity before it was privatised in the late 90s. But that’s just one piece of the puzzle – ultimately we need greater public support for innovation around sustainable materials.
George Massoud The problem that manufacturers like Erthly have is that the orders they receive for some of these boards they have developed are just too small, so they are unable to scale up their production. The fact is that these materials are still seen as fringe and not valued like some of the more business-as-usual materials.
What implications will the materials in the show have for your own work? Will we see a line of Material Cultures furniture sometime in the future?
Summer Islam The way we see this work is more about the questions we are looking to ask through the project, rather than the development of the materials themselves. It would be great to have a furniture line with these materials, but mostly it felt like an opportunity to open up a dialogue about the value systems we impose on our landscapes we extract from.
George Massoud It’s funny, since the exhibition opened we have received requests from people for samples and price lists for the panels. But again, most of these people are mainly interested in the aesthetic qualities of the panels – which itself says something about our value systems and what we prioritise.
Derin Fadina is an architect, writer and lecturer
Material Cultures: Woodland Goods is at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, until 31 October 2025