Partner Forest Case Studies: Tri-Lox + Great Mountain Forest

How Our Forests Can Inform Our Designs

Being responsive to sustainable management plans

Since Tri-Lox began sourcing fresh-cut wood, we have been researching the nuances and complexities of sustainable forest management. Our commitment to supporting resilient, regenerative forests requires a continuous exploration of what wood our regional working forests provide and how to best utilize that material.

This work seeks to challenge the constraints, stressors, and threats that the standard lumber market and broader economic pressures put on our forests. In order to understand these dynamics and prioritize forest health, Tri-Lox goes directly to the source and into the forest to understand the day-to-day specifics of silviculture practices.

Our research relies on close collaboration with a network of partner forests. Working with foresters and landowners, Tri-Lox explores how wood sourcing is an integral part of sustainable forest management and how these practices look at various scales and conditions.

We also look to architects and designers to inform this process by responding to a regional forest context and incorporating local wood into the built environment. This requires a design approach that embraces the variation and versatility of wood available to us throughout our region.

Great Mountain Forest

How the past informs the present + future

Great Mountain Forest (GMF) includes 6,500 acres of conserved forestland in Northwest Connecticut. GMF reflects the larger region’s history of land use in the past 200 years, where agriculture and industry drove deforestation throughout the 19th century. In the case of GMF, the land was used to produce charcoal that was sent to local blast furnaces for smelting iron. Hemlock trees were cut down for tanbark at local tanneries. By the early 20th century, the landscape, charred and reduced to mostly shrubbery, was either sold or abandoned.

Over the next several decades, Frederic C. Walcott and Starling W. Childs acquired and began reforesting the area; the 1900s shifted to a time of regeneration for GMF’s forests and wetlands. Today, the vibrant ecosystem is home to a sprawling variety of plants and wildlife, including over 21 rare or endangered species. The forest is a diverse assortment of hardwoods alongside coniferous Hemlock and White Pine. The Childs family established a conservation easement in 2003 that converted GMF to an independent nonprofit entity.

GMF’s reforestation throughout the 20th century reflects a larger trend of regrowth that now makes the Northeast the most forested region of the United States. While a conservation easement protects these thousands of acres from development, the forest must still contend with the interconnected threats of blights, invasive species, and climate change.

The Yale Camp at Great Mountain Forest, part of Yale School of the Environment (formerly Yale School of Forestry) has been in operation since 1941.

Our collaboration with Great Mountain Forest originated from the connection through our work with Yale School of the Environment, where we began our research of sustainable forest-sourced wood. We’re working directly with the GMF team to understand the composition of the forest, goals and challenges of its management, and how wood from upcoming selective harvests can be most effectively used.

2024 Forest Summit

Connecting the built + natural environment towards a more sustainable future

As part of this evolving partnership, we brought together designers and land managers for a Forest Summit, an immersive experience in nature with a focus on strategies for designers to source and specify local wood. Like our first Forest Summit at Yale-Myers, this forum brought designers closer to the day-to-day details of forest management and explored how the conditions of a forest can inform a more sustainable design process.

GMF Director of Programs + Operations Matt Gallagher (center) is a forester with an expansive knowledge of CT forests that he applies to ongoing research and educational programming.

Forest Walk
GMF’s Matt Gallagher guided participants through a walk in the woods, showing first-hand how the forest reflects the region’s history, as well as the complexities of managing the land for future resilience and regeneration. Participants got an up-close look at different management strategies, timescales, and the evolving threats to the forest. Gallagher demonstrated how selective harvests contribute to forest health and regeneration, including an upcoming White Pine removal that will open up canopy space to foster growth of hardwoods.

Case Studies: Connecting the Built + Natural Environment
Lara Kaufman, Design Director + Sustainability and Climate Action Lead — Studio Gang
Martin Harwood, Principal — SCAPE
Michael K. Chen, Principal — Michael K. Chen Architecture
Designers explored how they approach the relationship between the built and natural environment on a project level, focusing on opportunities for impact through a range of wood applications. From sourcing and specification to considerations of lifecycle and circularity, panelists discussed strategies, benefits, and challenges of using sustainable wood across projects of various types and scales.

One Region: Rural + Urban Land Management
Fiona Watt, Director of Lands and Forests — New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
Joseph Charap, Vice President of Horticulture — The Green-Wood Cemetery
Roy Brubaker, District Forester and Forest Owner — Michaux State Forest and Juniata County, PA
Urban and rural forests both play a crucial role in the health of people and the planet. In each context, we also see the challenge of how to manage trees in a way that maximizes forest resilience and wood use. Forest stewards from across our region discussed their approach to land management, tree care, and implementing more sustainable practices of salvage and selective harvests.

The Working Forest: Sawmill Demonstration
Dissecting the process of turning logs into lumber, participants considered how factors such as grading and sizing directly impact the yield from a single log. The group also contemplated how connecting a harvest to a project in its earliest phase creates the opportunity of milling to specifications that best accommodate the design process.

Agroforestry + Regenerative Farming
Our home base for the Forest Summit was the Isabella Freedman Center, a 400-acre campus that includes a regenerative farm and forest. Shamu Sadeh discussed the vital, multi-layered relationship between trees and people across past, present, and future through the history of the American Chestnut, as well as its future in the role of agroforestry.

Shamu Sadeh (third from the left) is the Managing Director of Education at Adamah Farm, an organic farm managed for soil health, carbon storage, nutrient density, and biodiversity.

Designing with the Forest

Learn more about how the forest can be a design partner

How can we take the wood yielded from sustainable management plans and maximize its use? This requires us to utilize a variety of species, grades, and think creatively about how more wood can be integrated across applications in the built environment. A regional supply chain has the potential to create a mutually beneficial relationship between the natural and built environment.

The process begins by considering the environmental conditions of a project site and determining what can be reused. The vernacular design of the Northeast reflects a history of wood use that charts a path towards future use. And our regional sourcing streams, whether from local forests or reclamation, offer a diverse variety of wood so designers won’t be limited by staying local.