Wood

Wood is a fresh, insightful and surprising look at the world's best timber architecture.

With 170 structures from the last 1,000 years, Wood features projects from some of the world's most celebrated architects. Renzo Piano's otherworldly New Caledonian Cultural Centre is found alongside projects from Tadao Ando and Peter Zumthor. Even the work of Le Corbusier, an architect best known for his work in concrete, is shown - his humble Mediterranean log cabin, Le Cabanon, was his last home.

Arranged to promote comparison and discussion, the selected projects take the reader on a global tour of inspiring and intriguing structures: a Vietnamese village hall sits beside a state-of-the-art Belgian laboratory, an Italian anatomical theatre alongside a luxurious Canadian sauna and an onion-domed Russian church next to a fortified Japanese castle.

Illustrated with extraordinary photographs, each project includes an extended caption providing an insightful commentary on the building.

An essay by the bestselling author and naturalist Richard Mabey explores the close relationship between trees and architecture.

Following the popularity of Concrete and Brick, Wood is a beautiful and informative visual exploration of a natural material that harbours an extraordinary range of expression and potential and has inspired architects for generations.

William Hall trained at Central Saint Martins and began his career in the office of the minimalist architect John Pawson. He now runs his own design practice in London, working with clients such as Calvin Klein, MoMA and Tate. Hall is the author of Concrete and Brick (Phaidon, 2012 and 2015).

Richard Mabey is a writer, broadcaster and naturalist and the author of some forty books, including the Whitbread Award winning biography, Gilbert White (1986), and Beechcombings: the Narratives of Trees (2007). For twenty years he was the custodian of an ancient wood in the Chilterns, South East England. Mabey currently lives in a sixteenth-century half-timbered farmhouse in Norfolk. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a visiting fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.