The growing interest in exposed wood surfaces, driven by biophilic design and low-carbon materials, is challenging the design community to explore ways to deliver more wood in their spaces. The practicalities of this are not yet mainstream or widely understood. In this session, the speaker will introduce a technical handbook offering innovative, practical solutions, and best practices for exposing wood in interior spaces. This research is based on insights from more than 40 stakeholders, including owners, operators and designers and represents a variety of building types including residential, healthcare, education, institutional, commercial, and community projects.
The speaker will present key themes including design decisions that leverage the unique material characteristics of wood, methods to protect, maintain, and repair it for long-term performance, how to optimize wood use through collaboration and resource stewardship, and how to navigate building codes and regulations that shape how exposed wood can be utilized.
Learning Objectives
At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to:
- Identify the key functional, aesthetic, and experiential reasons for specifying wood in interior spaces, including its effects on occupant experience, acoustics, and material character.
- Describe how wood’s material properties — such as grain, colour, grade, hardness, movement, surface reflectance, and antimicrobial characteristics — influence design decisions, detailing, and performance in interior applications.
- Evaluate strategies for integrating exposed wood into interior projects, including coordination with building systems, acoustic requirements, use in specialized environments, maintenance needs, and code-related considerations such as flame spread and combustible finishes.
- Apply best practices for using wood efficiently and responsibly by considering standard material sizes, prefabrication, repeated details, construction protection, budget-conscious allocation, and approaches that support stewardship, reuse, and design for disassembly.