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Material Assemblies 001 - Introducing the Material Library
The first edition of the Material Assemblies workshop and conversation series traced the material circumstances and consequences that follow the felling of a group of trees from the neighboring plot, now a construction site, of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, including a 70-year-old poplarpoplar tree, an oak, a group of ash and a small elm.
A mixed group of students and staff members - almost all of whom had wood related expertise - visited the sawmill of Stadshout in the morning. A guided tour was facilitated by Crisow von Schulz, one of the founders of the organization. During the site visit the group discussed matters and materials related to wood and timber as well as engaged with equipment and residues of the wood sawing process.
The activity continued in the afternoon in groups where participants traced and mapped the materials and their relationships starting from the construction site at the Rietveld Academie through the sawmill and back to the campus again where the timber will be made avaliable to the sudents after drying.
Mariana Martinez Balvanera(MX) an artist, alum of the Sandberg Instituut and initiator of the Collaboratory Kitchen logged in online at 15:00 interjecting the workshop with an in-depth introduction of the Biocultural Living Archive. The practice of archiving and unarchiving was a recurring notion mentioned in the talk emphasizing the two-wayed relationship of the archive that informs and in turn shaped through its encounters with territories and publics.
Workshop Call
A workshop following the material traces of the trees felled on the neighbouring plot of the academy combined with a site visit to the sawmill of Stadshout.
Site visit: Wednesday 19 November, 10:00–12:00 — Ronde Hoep West 25, Ouderkerk aan de Amstel
Workshop: Wednesday 19 November, 13:00–17:00 — Auditorium, 3rd floor BC
For the first Material Assembly, participants will have the opportunity to visit the sawmill of Stadshout, where several trees felled from the neighbouring plot of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie are currently being processed into timber. The wood will be dried over the coming months and years, and will eventually make its way back to the academy as source material to be used by the community. After the visit, participants will attempt to trace and identify not only the material characteristics of the wood, but also the various stages of its transformation, as well as the secondary materials, tools, people, and places involved in the process. The Material Library is currently under development, and as such, this workshop is part of its formative process.
Stadshout
Stadshout is an Amsterdam-based organization that rescues felled city trees and, through its sawmill and local partners, transforms them into usable wood and products.
Material Library
The Material Library is initiated by Márk Redele and co-hosted by Rietveld Sandberg Research and Urgent Ecologies.
Programme:
The activity will take the whole day and consists of two parts:
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Morning: Visit to the sawmill of Stadshout, 10:00–12:00
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Address: Ronde Hoep West 25, Ouderkerk aan de Amstel (approx. 30 min bike ride from the Rietveld)
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Afternoon: Workshop, 13:00–17:00, following the material traces of the trees felled on the neighbouring terrain
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Location: Auditorium, 3rd floor, BC building, Rietveld
It is essential that you attend both the morning and afternoon sessions. If you are unable to join both, please cancel your reservation so someone else can take your place.
Outline of the day
09:45–10:00 – Gathering at Stadshout
10:00–10:30 – Introduction by Stadshout founder, Crisow
10:30–11:45 – Guided exploration of the sawmill, gathering information and recording visual and audio material for the Material Library
12:00–13:00 – Travel back to Rietveld and lunch (individually)
13:00–13:30 – Introduction to the Material Library
13:30–16:30 – Collective group work:
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addressing the materials of the context
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reflecting on the organization of the Material Library
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considering strategies of collecting and documenting
16:30–17:00 – Reflection and closing thoughts
It might be useful to bring your laptop to the afternoon session, but it’s not essential.
Sawmill
Crisow introduces the origins of the sawmill to the group and emphasizes the lacking infrastructure for reusing valuable timber from the city and the need for affordable source materials for craftpeople.
00:00:00 Speaker 1
So the neighbours asked that I maybe do something, and I ordered a mobile sawmill, and I had two cubic meters of fine timber.
00:00:18 Speaker 1
For only €250. So that was a little amount.
00:00:23 Speaker 1
And the other thing was, there was a customer that wanted a teak table.
00:00:32 Speaker 1
I go to the trader, the wood-trading company.
00:00:40 Speaker 1
And there I had to pay like €1200 for the teak wood.
00:00:45 Speaker 1
And meanwhile in the shops there were teak tables, lots of them, from Indonesia, for €800.
00:00:53 Speaker 1
So this was really a bit strange. People in Indonesia, they need to make these tables on low wages, and here we cannot live with our craftsmanship, making tables anymore, because they cost too little.
00:01:13 Speaker 1
We threw away our urban trees like garbage, shipped them to the energy ovens. So this combined thing made me think, well, maybe…
00:01:29 Speaker 1
Well, let’s look why this happens like this.
00:01:36 Speaker 1
The thing is actually: the tree workers – well, they are tree workers – they don’t know that trees can be timber. So there was a gap between the craftsmanship and the tree workers. And the gap was the sawmill, actually.
00:01:55 Speaker 1
That’s roughly how I thought: maybe we need to create the sawmill, so trees can be processed into useful wood.