The Forest Keepers
Lindsey Wikstrom on mass timber, designing forests, and her new book
The Brief
We shape our forests whether we consider it or not. For Lindsey Wikstrom, this consideration could not be more important. As we move toward more bio-based building materials, the conversation on how we should design our forests is imperative. Lindsey unpacks the traditions of communities who have successfully managed forests for thousands of years, species-based design, multi-generational storytelling, and a possible path forward in a world that needs more foresters.
The Unpack
By the beginning of the 19th century, the Menominee Indian Tribe oversaw 10 million acres across the upper Midwest - a landscape they had occupied for over 10,000 years.1 The Tribe calls themselves the “The Forest Keepers.”2 Their expertise of sustainable forestry and ecosystem management predates any modern concept of forest certification systems. By 1854, repeated legal battles with the US Government eroded their land to a 235,000-acre reservation in central Wisconsin. Over the next 150 years, the Tribe would turn their new home into one of the most historically significant working forests in the world.3
Since the 1850s, the entire volume of their forest has been harvested twice, yet there is more wood today than when timber harvesting began.4 The forest is thriving because of mindful human design - driven by a responsible philosophy of taking only what the forest can give. The Menominee are one of many examples of forest designers in Lindsey Wikstrom’s new book, Designing the Forest and other Mass Timber Futures. In our conversation, Lindsey stressed why we should be designing our forests and the value of storytelling in spreading the philosophies of forest keepers around the world.
Lindsey is a prolific researcher on renewable materials and their ecologies. She is the Founding Principal of Mattaforma and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Her work has been featured in Embodied Energy and Design: Making Architecture between Metrics and Narratives, Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival, among many others. She has contributed to projects with The Living, Studio Gang, ArandaLasch, and Wendell Burnette Architects. Her recent work has revolved around mass timber - the forests that shape it, and how it can reshape forests..
As designers, we transform our world with every material choice we make. Each time we draw a 2x4 in CAD or extrude a steel beam in Revit, we set in motion planetary systems of extraction and reorganization - whether we consider it or not. While Lindsey says the first step to reduce our buildings’ embodied energy is the replacement of steel and concrete with bio-materials wherever possible, the subsequent question is the type of forest our material decisions are promoting.
“If we don’t know how to mix CLT species, we are perpetuating monoculture forests”
When we buy wood from forests, we are increasing the value of those forests. Lindsey explained this principle in a way I had never considered. The purchase of wood gives foresters more capital to care for their forests and produce mercantile trees. Having said this, if we restrict our mass timber systems to only a few species of trees, we risk encouraging monocultural forests - including all the negative externalities of placing quantity over quality. Lindsey, and her colleagues like Peggi Clouston, are researching ways of expanding the species available for mass timber systems. If we can include more species in buildings, we can design multi-stand, polycultural forests to supply them.
Species-driven design relies on sustainable harvesting to create mutually-beneficial relationships between cities and forests. This is, in part, what drew Lindsey to the Menominee. Their ability to use stories and data to communicate a working knowledge of forest management across generations is the reason for their ecological success. Looking into the history of a variety of forestry societies has revealed successes and failures across time-scales more appropriate for evaluating forests. When evaluating practices on plants that take 80 years to mature, we must look back for our lessons. When looking how to perpetuate those lessons forward across generations, Lindsey, like the Menominee, is using stories.
“Start harvesting the trees with the rising sun and work toward the setting sun, but to take only the mature trees, the sick trees and the trees that have fallen. When you reach the end of the reservation, turn and cut from the setting sun to the rising sun and the trees will last forever.” —Chief Oshkosh (1795–1858)
The story of the Menominee is one of positive human intervention, benefiting both the forest ecosystem and the people who depend on it. Humans have always, and will always, modify their landscapes. Lindsey wants to stress that this can (and must) be done in a mutually advantageous and respectful way. Conventional building materials are the products of colonized landscapes, and are the derivative of a modern, distorted, and bifurcated interpretation of nature: humans vs. the untouched landscape.5 These beliefs are incompatible with our own history, and the future of truly sustainable building practices. By telling the stories, reinforcing the philosophies, and creating the traditions that exemplify “equitable non-extractive living environments for humans and non humans,” we can build a blueprint for giving and taking for generations to come.6
“Let’s go back to measuring biodiversity above everything”
The traditions of the Menominee have been widely successful on their reservation, but never tested against our modern building demand. Lindsey finds the question of how these sustainable practices could support modern cities of wood, incredibly exciting. She extends the question of representation and the perpetuation of these messages, to you. Lindsey wants to see someone use an SLB grant to create a representational project centered on the ideas of multi-generational forestry, material ecologies across time, biodiversity above everything, and/or mutually-beneficial forest design. I will be the first to point towards her Three Material Stories as a point of inspiration.
Today, the Menominee’s biggest concern is a lack of people interested in forestry.7 Negative connotations of logging, and a shift towards a “do nothing approach,” are unraveling the forestry profession when we need it most. Lindsey is pushing back on these sentiments - allowing her passion for ecological design to drive her research, teaching, and storytelling.
Lindsey’s new book is about way more than just the Menominee…but I’m from Wisconsin, so I’m biased. Yet, the Tribe represents many sentiments present across Lindsey’s talks, writing, and our conversation: time, reciprocity, agency, and tradition’s ability to connect us to a deeper past and distant future. It is on the time-scale of the forest that Lindsey’s work is operating - challenging us all to think deeper about what we are designing and where.
What I Will Be Reading
“Designing the Forest and other Mass Timber Futures” by Lindsey Wikstrom
The description: Lindsey’s book will contain many more fascinating examples of forest designers, mass timber supply chains, and a pathway forward for a forested future (plus much, much more). I am very excited to check it out once it is available, and cannot wait to share its inspirations here once I get my hands on it. Go check it out!
What I’m Watching
“Possible Conversation #2” from Prada’s Possible Conversation Series
The description: Lindsey joined Formafantasma and Lucia Allais at this fascinating talk on “Thinking Forests” for Prada’s Possible Conversation Series. Here, Lindsey covers many of the ideas above and expands on others that shaped her research on forest design and its designers: time scales, “forest bathing, and ecological choreography to name a few.
What I’m Listening To
“America’s Progress Has Stalled - With Derek Thompson” from the Prof G Pod.
The description: Implementation over invention. Scott Galloway talks with Derek Thompson towards the end of his podcast to discuss the stalling of America’s progress. While we are perpetually fascinated with new ideas, we are getting less and less effective at implementing them - leaving us with obnoxiously high prices for housing, healthcare, etc. His ideas on inter-generational thinking from an economics standpoint pair well with Lindsey’s work on forest design. The conversation starts at the 18:25 mark.
See you next Friday,
Tom
“Brief History,” The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, accessed February 01, 2023, https://www.menominee-nsn.gov/.
Christopher and Barbara Johnson, “Menominee Forest Keepers,” in American Forests, April 27, 2012, https://www.americanforests.org/article/menominee-forest-keepers/.
Ibid.
David L. Mausel, Anthony Waupochick Jr., and Marshall Pecore, “Menominee Forestry: Past, Present, Future,” Journal of Forestry 115, no. 5 (September 2017): 366.
Lindsey Wikstrom, “Fringe Timber: An Ethics of Care in a Vertical Commons,” GSAAP Syllabus (Spring 2022), https://www.acsa-arch.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/HM-TEP-FringeTimberII-Course.pdf.
Wikstrom, “Fringe Timber,” 01.
Mausel, Waupochick, and Pecore, “Menominee Forestry,” 369.