Established in 2015, Wood at Work is a community of practice linking sustainable urban building, forest conservation, and global supply chain reform to build healthy cities while protecting the world’s life-sustaining forests and the people who rely on them. 

Our multidisciplinary group includes world leaders in architecture, city planning, anthropology, forest ecology, and sustainable forestry. Over one hundred experts already collaborate under the W@W umbrella, yielding new business partnerships, projects, and organizational knowledge.

We are helping to guide the renaissance of a building material that is strong, light, flexible; lasts hundreds of years; and benefits both physical and mental human health. During production, it can restore natural landscapes, create habitat for plants and animals and diverse employment for millions of people. Solar powered, it’s main byproduct is pure oxygen. This material is wood, and it grows on trees. Cutting edge engineering developments now allow us to build wood structures more than 25 stories that are faster, less expensive, and just as safe as their concrete and steel counterparts, sequestering millions of tons of carbon instead of producing it. New perspectives on traditional and indigenous knowledge offer new synergies between urban and rural communities. And new sourcing relationships with sustainable wood producers make it possible to procure ‘good’ wood that protects forests and forest communities, locally and globally.

Annual Conference

Wood at Work hosts an annual conference for our community and interested guests. We are preparing for our 2020 virtual roundtable. The conference speakers are world leaders in architecture, conservation, business, and urban policy. Each conference also includes:

• Hands-on activities and live woodworking demos
• Presentations of cutting-edge research on wood technology, policy, and procurement
• Discussions by world-famous authors and artists on wood as a tool for culture-building and craftsmanship
• Participatory discussions and innovative projects

Cities4Forests

One of the outcomes of Wood at Work has been the birth of a new international network called Cities4Forests, a collaboration between Pilot Projects, WRI and REVOLVE. Participants of Wood at Work 2017 will recall one of our round tables that first convened on the topic, which is currently a reality and serves 60 cities around the world.

Why Wood?

Imagine a technology—a solar-powered 3D printer—that harvests CO2 from the atmosphere and converts it into a variety of building materials, materials that can replace polluting alternatives like concrete, aluminum, steel, or plastic. The by-products of this process are pure oxygen and life support systems for endangered animals, plants, and people.

This technology is the tree.

Scott Francisco - Founder and Director of Pilot Projects - is a designer and systems thinker with a focus on infrastructure that supports long term cultural goals in cities, organizations and ecosystems. Scott's background in architecture, urbanism, construction, and consulting inform the high value he places on engaging stakeholders directly in the design process—particularly in the midst of today's overemphasis on efficiency and quantification. Scott has taught at the McGill School of Architecture, Michael Graves College, Parsons The New School for Design, Stanford in New York, and The University of Kentucky School of Architecture. He speaks regularly on systems thinking, wood and forests, workplace design, organizational culture, and sustainability. He holds architecture degrees from the University of Toronto and MIT.

Dr. Sarah Jane Wilson - Director of Nature-Based Projects -  is a forest geographer with a background in ecology (MSc, BSc), human geography and tropical forests (PhD). Her research and practice connects socio-cultural dynamics with sustainable forest landscapes urban and rural, including conservation and restoration strategies, education, and community engagement. She has worked with community-based forest restoration and conservation enterprises in montane cloud forests in Andean Ecuador and the Nepalese Himalaya, and in lowland jungle in Guatemala’s Peten. Recent postdoc work with the University of Michigan and with the PARTNERS reforestation network focused on understanding and assessing the social and ecological drivers and outcomes of community forestry and restoration - and on crafting action-oriented research for the field. She has also served as a consultant and reviewer for many organizations, including the IUCN, International Tropical Timber Organization, IPBES, and multiple academic publications.  A recipient of the prestigious L’Oreal Women in Science Mentorship Award, she is also dedicated to teaching and developing communities of practice around pressing social and environmental challenges.