Landscape architecture student Anna Hatcher, ’26, studies the coffee table she’s building, identifying the right supporting pieces to steady its retro-futuristic curved legs. This heirloom in the making—which Hatcher has painstakingly built from elm wood felled near Parrington Lawn on the UW campus—is the culminating project of 10 weeks in the Furniture Studio, taught by Steve Withycombe in the Center for Built Environments (CBE).
Prior to the launch of UW Facilities’ Salvage Wood Program in 2009, campus trees marked for removal would have become merely wood chips. Over the years, the program has grown: In 2016, Facilities acquired a sawmill and then a solar kiln, both necessary for processing trees into more manageable, usable pieces of lumber. Now, thanks to a $72,400 grant from the Campus Sustainability Fund, students like Hatcher can use this wood in their furniture design courses.
Rae Moore, ’17, director of CBE’s Fabrication Lab, says the grant funds have been used to build a corrugated metal shed behind the workshop for storing lumber and will pay Facilities staff for the labor involved in processing and transporting wood for the next couple of years. For students, the program means more than just cheap lumber. “Most people don’t get to use wood from the campus—it’s so spiritually beautiful and so emblematic of our time as students here,” Hatcher says. “It doesn’t get more sustainable than this.”
Students in the wood lab at Gould Hall have access to professional-quality tools.
Chris Copeland and Sarah Chu work with Western Maple Wood sourced from the UW campus.