Ecological Design In Industry:
Four companies lead the way

by Seth Stem

During the last few years, a number of industries have begun to address the issue of sustaining the world's wood resources. The motivating factors are linked to society's growing conservation consciousness. Environmental groups and the media have spotlighted a variety of ecological concerns--from oil spills to the impending demise of the spotted owl and other species to the destruction of the rainforest. This increasing awareness has translated into pressure from consumers, which has affected industry's profits both positively and negatively.

Wood products manufactured with seemingly politically correct practices can mean increased profits. Using a lesser-known but available species of wood may not only reduce material costs, but also improve the product's public image. Businesses have begun using conservation issues as marketing tools, and some companies design entire product lines around wood from sustainable sources. Unfortunately, others simply use catch phrases to make their existing products look good to an ecologically aware market. (Advertisement stabs such as "This cutting board uses no rainforest woods" do not necessarily mean that the woods come from a well-managed source.)

Several companies have made commendable efforts to design new products or revise existing ones for the sake of intelligent wood use. Notable among them are The Martin Guitar Company, The Knoll Group, Portico Door Company, and Bridge City Tool Works.

The Martin Guitar Company in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, has traditionally manufactured some of the world's finest acoustic instruments from woods such as rosewood (Dalbergia nigra), mahogany, and spruce (Picea spp.) -- woods that have been found over the centuries to have the right properties for instrument making. Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) is one of the tone woods preferred for soundboards, and Martin Guitar has discovered a bountiful alternative source of old-growth Sitka spruce logs, reclaiming wood from abandoned Alaskan salmon traps. During the past year, Martin Guitar has made a directed effort to develop alternatives to endangered species of rainforest woods, seeking instead to use domestic hardwoods, such as cherry (Prunus spp.), walnut (Juglans spp.), maple (Acer spp.), ash (Fraxinus spp.), basswood (Tilia spp.), and mesquite (Prosopis spp.). This presented quite a design challenge, because the woods in a musical instrument are selected for a wide range of properties, including stability, density, tonality, and aesthetic quality. Martin Guitar evaluated these domestic species for their ability to produce tones that could be rated as "well balanced throughout, clear, sweet, good projection." Results ranged from such optimum ratings to "shallow bass, tinny treble, lacks projection." According to Dick Boak, Director of Advertising, walnut proved to be the best of the woods tested.

Michael Dresdner, of the research and development department, states in his synopsis of Martin's "sustainable-yield" design effort: "We decided to build several guitars using only woods harvested in the United States. The paradox of the local argument for sustainability is that America is not currently providing a very good role model for responsible forest management, and a simple boycott of tropical timbers does not address the economic reality of Third World countries. However, we felt that choosing local woods at least keeps the raw material source close to home, where it can be tightly monitored and verified."

The Knoll Group, of New York City, one of the largest manufacturers of office furnishings in the United States, has fully addressed the design and fabrication of an environmentally sound product in the development of a new chair series designed by Frank Gehry, a California-based architect. Gehry's bentwood chairs are made of thin laminations of maple veneer cross-woven like a basket to obtain a strong, flexible structure with a minimum of material. As Gehry explained in a Knoll press release, "Knoll was relentless in evaluating every material and process related to the furniture. We utilized sustainable resources and applied clean technologies without sacrificing design." The maple was harvested exclusively from the Menominee forest in Wisconsin. The Menominee, who control 234,000 acres of forest land on their reservation, have been noted for practicing sustainable forestry methods for decades and have recently been awarded certification by Scientific Certification Systems, an environmental-assessment company based in California.

Knoll also developed a finishing system for the chairs in which the pieces were dipped into, not sprayed with, water-based finishes. This process resulted in a ninety-eight percent efficiency in the application of the finish and eliminated potentially harmful, airborne pollutants from the workplace.

Portico Door Company, of San Jose, Costa Rica, has perhaps developed the ultimate approach to wood conservation by purchasing and managing their own forests to provide sustainable yields of royal "mahogany" (Karapa guyanenses), the primary material in their manufacture of fine-quality doors. Until 1987, Portico purchased logs for its sawmills in the open market. Because of their concern with the apparently accelerating rate of deforestation in Costa Rica, however, they purchased several thousand acres of land on which they achieve sustainable yields of the species and avoid logging operations that significantly disturb the rainforest ecosystem.

For seven years, Bridge City Tool Works in Portland, Oregon, made a series of precision marking and measuring woodworking tools from brass and Brazilian rosewood. As a conservation measure, the company conscientiously purchased as much of the rosewood as possible in the form of cutoffs and seconds from the C.F. Martin Company. Although historically rosewood has been used for fine tool handles, in 1991, Bridge City began using Juara wood, a material derived from beech or maple that has been impregnated with phenolic resin. Bridge City reasoned that, even though they had been recycling waste material from another manufacturing process, they did not wish to have their product associated with the use of an endangered wood species. In Juara, they found a substitute material that is stable, hard, and has its own inherent beauty, with a color, luster, and sparkle every bit as attractive as rosewood. The company also discovered that Juara makes a more durable and accurate tool.

All of this is a start. Increasingly, material sustainability and the welfare of the environment are becoming the responsibilities of industry and those who design for industry. Conscientious wood use and conservation depend not only on an awareness of the issues, but also on the perception of the value of a species and of how design can support its use and the use of its alternatives in industry and craft.

From Good Wood Alliance

Excerpted From Conservation By Design, a companion catalogue to the exhibition, edited by Scott Landis, founder of Good Wood Alliance