Building from England’s Woodlands Project Demonstrates Major Potential for Homegrown Timber in Sustainable Construction
A pioneering research initiative has demonstrated that England’s underutilised deciduous broadleaf forests could play a transformative role in delivering low-carbon buildings, supporting biodiversity, and strengthening domestic supply chains.
The three-year Building from England’s Woodlands (BFEW) project, funded by the Forestry Commission’s Woods into Management Forestry Innovation Fund, brought together leading experts from forestry, wood science, timber manufacturing, architecture, and construction to explore how English-grown timber can be used more effectively in modern building systems.
Led by the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE), and including Edinburgh Napier University, Built Environment – Smarter Transformation (BE-ST), Ecosystems Technologies, and dRMM Architects, the project concluded that, when appropriately selected and specified, English hardwoods can play a significant role in structural applications.
The findings challenge long-standing perceptions about the suitability of homegrown timber for construction. A key innovation emerging from the research is the development of hybrid engineered timber products that optimally combines hardwood and softwood within the same structural element.
Testing showed that hybrid cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glued-laminated timber (glulam) products met all required strength and durability criteria using existing manufacturing methods. The use of hardwood in key structural zones also enabled material savings of approximately 10–15%, creating opportunities for lighter, more efficient building systems.
Additionally, the project included real-world demonstration such as the “Building from Forests” display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the installation of a hybrid hardwood-softwood glulam beam in NMITE’s new Skills Hub building in Hereford.
Beyond construction, the project highlights wider environmental, economic, and social benefits. Greater use of English timber could reduce embodied carbon, increase long-term carbon storage in buildings, support more resilient and biodiverse forests, and strengthen rural economies through local manufacturing and value-added processing.
The research also aligns with the UK Government’s Timber in Construction Roadmap and wider Net Zero ambitions, providing evidence that homegrown timber can contribute meaningfully to decarbonising the built environment as well as diversifying productive forestry.
The findings mark an important step towards a future where forests, manufacturing, and construction work together to create sustainable buildings while supporting healthier landscapes and stronger local economies. With continued investment in research, commercialisation, and skills development, England’s woodlands could become a cornerstone of a lower-carbon, more resilient built environment for generations to come.
A summary of the research is available here, and the full research here. Building from Forests is on in the furniture gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington until 30 October 2026
Quotes from the research team
David Bole FICFor, Head of Green Economy & Skills, Forestry Commission said: “England’s woodlands are a national asset with the potential to play a vital role in addressing the climate emergency. The Building from England’s Woodlands project has demonstrated that homegrown timber, including a diverse range of hardwood species, can be used safely and effectively in modern construction. By unlocking the potential of our forests, we can reduce reliance on imported and carbon-intensive materials, support healthier and more resilient woodlands, and create new opportunities for sustainable growth across the forestry, manufacturing and construction sectors.”
Professor Robert Hairstans, Director of the Centre of Advanced Timber Technology NMITE & Head of the Centre for Offsite Construction & Innovative Structures, Edinburgh Napier University said: “One of the greatest successes of this project has been bringing together expertise from across the forestry, manufacturing and construction sectors to solve shared challenges. The structural testing has given us greater confidence in the capabilities of English hardwoods, while the collaborative approach has helped turn research findings into real-world applications. This demonstrates how innovation, when supported by strong partnerships, can unlock new opportunities for sustainable construction and healthier, more resilient forests.”
Finbar Charleson, Research Lead, dRMM said: “For architects, this research opens up exciting new possibilities. Rather than designing around a limited palette of imported materials, we can begin to design with the characteristics and diversity of our local forests in mind. The V&A exhibition helped translate complex research into a tangible experience, demonstrating that innovation in timber construction is not just a technical challenge but a cultural opportunity to rethink how we build, source materials and connect people with the landscapes around them.”
Louise Rogers, Built Environment – Smarter Transformation (BE-ST) said: “The Building from England’s Woodlands project demonstrates that the opportunity is not simply to use more timber, but to create higher-value manufacturing pathways that make better use of the resources available within our forests. By developing and testing hybrid engineered timber products, we have shown how English hardwoods can be integrated into modern manufacturing processes to create efficient, high-performance construction systems. This work directly supports the ambitions of the Timber in Construction Roadmap by providing evidence that innovation, domestic manufacturing capability and supply chain collaboration can help accelerate the transition to a lower-carbon built environment.”
About the authors
About Edinburgh Napier University:
ENU is the #1 modern university in Scotland (Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2023), the #1 university in Edinburgh for student satisfaction (NSS 2020, 2021, 2022 & 2023), a top 10 UK modern university (Times/Sunday Times Good University Guide 2023), and the top Scottish modern university for research power and impact (Research Excellence Framework 2021). ENU is internationally recognised for research and education work in timber construction.
About dRMM:
dRMM is a team of architects and designers driven by curiosity, innovation and pragmatism. Their work is shaped by research and responds to climate, urban context and social condition; they won the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2017 for Hastings Pier. Recently completed projects include WorkStack light industrial studios in Charlton; Wick Lane housing and industrial workspace in Hackney; Wintringham Primary, a large new timber school in Cambridgeshire; and the research study, Measuring Mass Timber.
About NMITE:
NMITE’s vision is to deliver a different model of engineering higher education, developing work-ready, talented engineers and leaders in technology innovation. Its curriculum brings the engineering disciplines together and integrates the liberal arts and the interpersonal skills needed by today’s employers to tackle the world’s problems. The educational approach of NMITE is to apply a student-centric learning methodology with a curriculum fuelled by real-world challenges, meaning that the approach is distinctive in the marketplace and attracts a different sort of engineering learner. Teaching and learning are strengthened by partnerships with more than 80 industry partners spanning a wide range of sectors.
About BE-ST
Built Environment – Smarter Transformation (BE-ST) is Scotland’s national innovation centre for construction and the built environment. Its mission is to accelerate the built environment’s transition to zero carbon through a wide range of collaborative projects, programmes, platforms and partnerships focused on delivering tangible and sustainable impact at pace. Collaboration partners can access Scotland’s innovation ecosystem and benefit from a range of flexible tools and support services including an extensive network of academic expertise and the Innovation Campus; the UK’s first built environment-focused digital manufacturing centre, prototyping, and future skills centre of excellence.
About Ecosystems Technologies
Ecosystems Technologies designs, manufactures and installs high-quality, versatile, modular buildings for residential, education, healthcare, leisure, office and industrial sectors. Its build systems are based on the whole life cycle and circular economy principles, providing efficient design for manufacture with the added value option to disassemble, re-purpose and re-locate, should the building’s use, shape or size need to change during its lifetime.
The approach has been to address the technological challenge on the one hand and develop the market demand on the other such that there is now a strong pull from the market for a proven product. By working with academic and industry partners on projects such as the Innovate UK-funded “Transforming Timber” project, it has undertaken a suite of structural, thermal, acoustic and fire tests on the resulting products and shown that we can manufacture engineered products capable of displacing the imported alternatives
