Trees for free

Come and join us the 25 th November at room 103 at 12.30-13.30 hour

Caught between the axe and the cnc-machine

You students of the Rietveld Academy have been given some precious presents by the municipality of Amsterdam. A few dozen trees, right in front of the school, will be yours. Ash, Hazel, Willow, Maple, Yew, and Alder. A great gift although with a shadow side, the loss of an intimate but forgotten place of trees.
But what can you do with those trees? Turn them into plywood, chipboard, MDF or simply mill and dry the trees? Are there more possibilities?

Wood in it’s original form, the tree, is often lost to modern minds. Only processed wood is used. A lot of the possibilities and beauty is already lost in those processed ‘kinds’ of wood.

Moreover in these modern times machines have taken over from human hands. More often then not students ask for a specific machine to model their ideas in wood. The culmination of the machine is the cnc-machine or the 3d-printer, programming is the skill required, but the touch of wood is lost. And machines, and they are handy!, tend to take away the joy that you can experience if you master de wood by hand. The augmented efficiency of the machine can hinder your relationship with wood. And you lose the possibility to enhance the intelligence of your hands.

Here comes in the ancient art/ craft of greenwood working. Working with wood that hasn’t been dried or (saw) milled. For probably many millennia the working of greenwood has been practiced. Ideally you work the tree/ wood in the forest itself, with simple but ingenious hand tools and techniques. In that way you stay in close contact with the tree/ wood.

We, Job Suijker en Sjors van der Meer from Vers-Hout, like to challenge you to make something beautiful with your own hands. Enhance the intelligence of your hands!

In this lecture, which is a pre … for workshops to come, we will introduce you to the world of green-wood working. What is greenwood? Which tools are used: axes, shaving horses, froes, drawknives among others will be shown. What are the principal techniques of joining. What you can and cannot do with greenwood.

Crisow von Schulz from Stadshout will explain the principles of Bottom Up Design.
Every piece of the tree can be a useful product. You take that with you in the design , and you will end up with almost no sawmill waste.

Come and join us the 25 th November at room 103 at 12.30 hour….