Harvesting Encounter: An Interpretive Research Center at Pack Forest

Abstract

As environmentalists focus on the negative impacts of forestry and the built environment focuses on the sustainable qualities of a renewable resource, wood has become divorced from timber. Harvesting Encounter proposes an interpretive research center at the University of Washington's Center for Sustainable Forestry at Pack Forest, where a recreational landscape merges with a working forest. Through the investigation of a dynamic landscape, the project exposes the processes of resource extraction, sharing them with the public to encourage a unique contact with nature. The architectural integration of wood products into the surrounding forest aims to generate a deeper understanding for the relationship between the built environment and the natural environment.