Forest to Forest: A Circular Ecology for Timber
Lau Grants for Just Climate Futures: The Weather to Come
April 7–21, 2026
Berkeley California 94720
USA
Berkeley, California—The UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design presents Forest to Forest: A Circular Ecology for Timber, an exhibition by the (Im)material Matters Lab, directed by Liz Gálvez, in collaboration with the Berkeley Wood Lab, co-directed by Paul Mayencourt. The exhibition is On View from April 7 to April 21 at the Bauer Wurster Gallery and is part of this year’s Lau Just Climate Futures 2026 Exhibition: The Weather to Come. Participants include faculty in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Planning. The event is free and open to the public.
Wood is often understood in architecture as a stable, renewable building material—standardized, structural, and readily available in forms such as the ubiquitous 2×4. Yet wood is not static. It is a living, biogenic material embedded within ecological and temporal cycles that extend far before and beyond the lifespan of buildings. Forest to Forest confronts wood not as a finished product, but as a material in motion, circulating through multiple overlapping lifecycles.
At the center of the exhibit is a simple gallery structure constructed from conventional 2×4 framing—a familiar architectural system that represents wood’s most common transformation into building material. Surrounding this frame, however, are samples of wood in various states of decline: diseased trunks, decaying logs, and fragments already returning to the forest floor. While the milled lumber of the exhibition walls signals construction and use, the materials contained within reveal wood in processes of death, decomposition, and ecological regeneration.
Accompanying drawings trace wood’s movement across diverse landscapes throughout California—from healthy forests in Humboldt County to fire-prone and post-fire environments, experimental forestry sites, lumber yards, and construction sites. Together, these images map the many conditions through which wood circulates, revealing a material ecology that extends beyond the boundaries of architecture.
The exhibition also features an ongoing research project at the Russell Research Station in Lafayette, part of UC Berkeley’s research forest network. There, a series of structures constructed from reclaimed lumber tests the possibility of returning building materials back into forest ecosystems. Rather than preserving wood indefinitely through chemical treatment or diverting it to landfills or incineration, these structures are designed to decompose in place, allowing their material and nutrients to reenter ecological cycles.
By bringing these moments together, Forest to Forest reframes wood as a material whose life extends from forest to forest. Understanding wood as a biogenic material—one that originates in living systems and ultimately returns to them—invites architects to reconsider how we build with it, how we care for it, and what futures we allow it to have beyond the life of our buildings.
Project team
Naomi Lucia Manuel, Lincoln Ruiz-Truong, Joseph Sungjune Byun
Project support
Supported by the Lau Grants for Just Climate Futures. With thanks to Berkeley Forests, including Rachelle Hedges, Ariel Thomson Roughton, and Rob York. Additional support from UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design and the Institute of Urban & Regional Development.
About the (Im)material Matters Lab
Founded at UC Berkeley by Assistant Professor of Architecture Liz Gálvez, the (Im)material Matters Lab investigates the intersections of architecture, theory, and environmentalism. Through research and experimentation, the lab re-examines historical and emerging building technologies to address the challenges of a rapidly changing world. Its work bridges material science, environmental performance, and design culture, exploring how architecture can respond to shifting ecological, climatic, and social conditions. Learn more at officeforexample.org.
About the Berkeley Wood Lab
The Berkeley Wood Lab is a research cooperative at the University of California, Berkeley dedicated to advancing the future of engineered wood products and timber architecture in California. Led by Cooperative Extension Professors Paul Mayencourt and Daniel Sanchez, the lab brings together expertise from the Department of Architecture in the College of Environmental Design and the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management in the College of Natural Resources. learn more at here.
Bauer Wurster Gallery, UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design
Hours: Monday–Friday, 9am–4:30pm
