Forest First: Timber Building - Softcover

Moe, Kiel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1638402019 ISBN 13: 9781638402015

Publisher: Actar, 2026

Synopsis

This book puts the forest first and offers a detailed immersion into forest history, forest stand dynamics, forest ecology, forest-building carbon dynamics, and possible future forest trajectories as the pretext for thinking about timber building technics. 

The specificity of regional forests suggests much about the prospect of non-extractive building design: building that tends and mends its terrestrial basis rather than takes, makes, and breaks it. How might we design and build in a non-extractive manner?

To address that evolutionary question this book considers the recursive relationship between forests and timber building. It puts the forest first and offers a detailed immersion into forest history, forest stand dynamics, forest ecology, forest-building carbon dynamics, and possible future forest trajectories as the pretext for thinking about timber building technics. The specificity of regional forests suggests much about the prospect of non-extractive building design: building that tends and mends its terrestrial basis rather than takes, makes, and breaks it. Building activity can augment and improve forest conditions as an instance of regenerative design and as a path towards reconciliation, but only if conceived, valued, and practiced in ways distinct from normative design and construction practices.

The future should no longer be a colony of present design practices that treat building as an art and science of extraction. By putting the forest first its conception of timber building technics, this book develops a more regenerative approach to the terrestrial relations of forest-building.

About this title

About the Author

Kiel Kenneth Moe is a registered practicing American architect. Moe has taught architecture and energy at University of Illinois at Chicago, Syracuse University, Northeastern University and Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

When you say the word “forest,” most people will have a very positive image in their minds. For anyone who has spent any time walking through a forest, they are a source of wonder, for what they provided us visually at the time or for the number of endless products they have provided for our daily living. But, after decades and centuries of exploitation, our forests are not well.

Forest ecology studies the relationships between all living organisms, not just the trees, in an ecosystem and the interactions that happen among soil, climate, air, water, and humans. For nearly four decades now, I have been studying the forest ecology of the southeastern U.S. with a focus on longleaf pine and fire. I have witnessed an unimaginable change in southern forests and forestry practices. The trend in forestry is to ignore what the land is telling us by planting species where nature showed they were not suited to be, often to maximize short-term profit. What was profitable in forestry just 10 years ago no longer is. We need to get back to thinking about the ecology of species and ecosystems we are interested in because that tells us what nature wants there to be. It is time to put Forests First and look beyond forestry.

Here is where we need to think about architecture and the people who design buildings. They have a unique perspective on materials and their use that most forest ecologists do not. In this regard, I have had the immense pleasure of having Kiel Moe as a student in several ecology classes over the past two years. In these classes, he has researched northeastern forest ecology and left few, if any, stones unturned. As someone with limited to no ecological background, he brings an open mind and a fresh perspective that must be considered and talked about in both forestry and architecture. The world is rapidly changing; species are disappearing, and we need to move, as Kiel puts it, from “taking and making to tending and mending.” Aldo Leopold, a famed conservationist, wrote, “We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” Kiel has provided an excellent conversation starter for forest and building communities with this book.

Edition details

• Publisher: Actar
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1638402019
• ISBN 13: 9781638402015
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288