Hooke Park 100-year plan

SCOPE:

Hooke Park, the forest campus of the Architectural Association (AA), has been a centre of architectural innovation since the early 1980s, first through furniture designer John Makepeace, latterly through the AA.

The 120ha forest has been key to this success providing the material and inspiration for design experimentation. In 2022 we were asked to run the Woodlab, a programme of work funded by John Makepeace to focus on the resilience of the Hooke forest.

DELIVERY:

The multi-year Woodlab saw the appointment of our ecologist Cat Byrne to work 2 days a week on the project. Coming from a biology and ecology background she first had to get her head around both commercial forest dynamics and architecture & design.

An ecological and timber inventory baseline was undertaken as the starting point. This allowed us to experiment with digital data collection and mapping. From this, an in-depth complex risk assessment matrix drawing from insurance risk management was developed. Finally a 100-year adaptive forest management plan was created including details of species selection and silvicultural systems along with protocols for long-term forest monitoring and review.

The work continues, now focussing on linking the architectural experiments with forestry development. Timber testing of established and novel species; uses for a wider variety of species and matching ecological and financial resilience.