Forest & Frame: Growing the Regional Timber Culture – Timber talks evening

PIONEERING THE POTENTIAL 2026

Homegrown 01 - Forest & Frame: Growing the regional wood and timber culture

Fourth Door's Pioneering the Potential 2026

Rob Wheaton, Stride Treglown on the Gwynfaen Welsh timber housing development, plus Finbar Charleson, dRMM and Matthew Woodcock, Forestry Commission

Rob Wheaton, Stride Treglown - Gwynfaen timber housing development: set in South Wales’s Gower peninsula and with 144 timber frame housing units built from Welsh wood, Gwynfaen (https://stridetreglown.com/projects/gwynfaen/) is the largest local timber residential project in the UK to date. Wheaton will explore how this project managed to ensure local Welsh timber could be specified as a key material on Gwynfaen, both immediately relevant to Human Nature’s plan for Phoenix Lewes’s (https://www.phoenixlewes.com/) own all-timber urban district and to the wider use of regional timber in residential and other building types.

Finbar Charleson, dRMM – Charleson is research lead at dRMM (https://drmmstudio.com/), one of London’s industrial timber pioneers (https://www.fourthdoor.co.uk/unstructured/unstructured_09/extra/drmm_special.php), and will talk about the architects role in Building from England’s Woodlands (https://drmmstudio.com/wp2020/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/0611_BFEW-FinalReport-Web.pdf) research project, and other ongoing collaborative research into indigenous timber, next prospective steps in growing its take up, and the projects R&D examples that were shown at its V&A Museum exhibition, Make-Good: Building from Forests (https://drmmstudio.com/project/va-make-good-building-from-forests/).

Matthew Woodcock, Partnerships & Expertise Manager, Forestry Commission – Matthew is a forester and senior manager at the Forestry Commission’s Alice Holt (https://www.forestryengland.uk/alice-holt-forest) Forest, Farnham Southeast HQ with many years of experience in forestry and wood culture across the Southeast. Matthew will be talking about the Forestry Commission’s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestry_Commission) evolving approach to the potential of locally sourced timber in the region, and specifically, regarding beech hardwoods, with around 60, 000 ha’s of stands currently coming to maturity.

PLEASE NOTE - Studio Hardie venue still to be confirmed.

Photos below - of Stride Treglown's Gwyfaen Housing project and the Make-Good V&A exhibition

Description supplied by the event organiser.