Path independence

Thesis @ Royal Danish Academy

2025

Situated in southern Sweden, this thesis project dives deep into the tangle of land use, ecology, and economy that comes to a knot in a family-owned sawmill. It builds on a hunch that there is critical leverage for experimentation in this overlooked industrial site. How can architecture break echo chambers and catalyze transformative relationships between environmentalists and forest industry workers?

A collection of direct quotes from foresters, mill owners and operators, biologists, and activists that this project engaged from October 2024 to June 2025.

“the history of wood is a history of intentionally constructed relationships with the earth, meaning that forests, just as much as cities, are built environments.”

Lindsey Wikstrom, Designing the Forest and Other Mass Timber Futures (2023)

The proposal grows out of the specific concerns that were expressed through interviews by local millworkers, forest owners, building industry members and environmentalists over the course of six months.

Log sorting process at the sawmill.

At the sawmill yard, non-compliant wood refers to logs that are removed from the milling line due to failure to match standard characteristics. Although logs are already evaluated and sorted as they are cut by the harvester, some low-grade logs are still mistakenly transported to the sawmill.

From arrival to loading onto the sawline, logs are repeatedly scanned to identify markers of non-compliance, typically through automated means. There are three general markers of non-compliance – crookedness, rot, or presence of embedded metal fasteners, like nails or staples, that can damage saw blades if not detected early. If any of these three markers are present in a log, it literally falls off the line.

The log is then picked up and transported to the “energy wood pile” – a holding zone for non-compliant wood stored for future sale to energy plants. Non-compliant logs can stay untouched in the energy wood pile for as long as a year. Mill employees recognize that this wood may still hold some potential value, but as the sawmill operates at an industrial pace and scale, this resource remains overlooked.

This project proposes two spaces for stakeholders who hold opposing views - a non-compliant wood workshop where architects, timber buyers, and sawmill employees create a new supply chain for these undervalued wood products, and a nature center (naturum) that invites sawmill employees, biologists, and foresters to gather & collaborate.

Project as a “Trojan horse” — using proposals to gain admission into closed sawmill boardroom meetings & initiate a discussion about alternative milling futures.

JGA sawmill site plan. Proposal sites highlighted with green pins - one inside the secure perimeter, and one outside.

Existing derelict steel structure that serves as the basis for the non-compliant wood workshop proposal.

Construction sequence for the non-compliant wood workshop.

Non-compliant wood workshop, plan and section.

Transverse section through proposed workshop. Remaining steel structure in gray, grafted wood structure & envelope assemblies in green.

Approach to the sawhall.

Sawhall interior. Grafted joint between old and new expressed.

Finishing workshop interior.

Approach to the finishing workshop.

The construction of the new nature center using timber planed from rejected logs in the new workshop. Its final form is not the objective of the design – it’s rather the process of interrogating what can be made here, using an underutilized resource, and directly connecting the mill and the surrounding community with a common ground.

Full presentation + written supplement here

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