Studio in the Woods Turns 20 With Three Timber Live-Builds

Twenty years after Piers Taylor and four fellow architects founded Studio in the Woods, the summer school has marked its anniversary with three 1:1 timber pavilions built in four days — and a documentary to prove it. The short film, titled Crossing, Lookout, Horizon, records the initiative's 2026 session at the Architectural Association's Hooke Park campus in Dorset, UK.

The program runs on a simple premise: no predetermined briefs, no drawings in advance. Roughly 50 students, practitioners, and timber specialists gather each year for an intensive four-day build cycle. They design and assemble full-scale structural interventions using timber harvested and milled directly from the surrounding woodland.

The 2026 iteration, sited within Hooke Park's working forest, produced three site-specific installations — Crossing, Lookout, and Horizon. The structures tested material optimization, reciprocal framing, and direct fabrication methods, all resolved on site rather than in a studio.

Who teaches a live-build workshop?

Over two decades, Studio in the Woods has built a teaching roster that reads like a cross-section of contemporary British architecture. Stirling Prize winner Niall McLaughlin, Lebanese-French architect Lina Ghotmeh, and collaborative design practice Architecture 00 have all led on-site workshops.

Instruction pairs architectural theory with structural pragmatism. Master timber framer Charley Brentnall, former Hooke Park director Martin Self, Lee Ivett of Baxendale, and structural engineers Tim Lucas (Price & Myers) and Toby McClean (Tall Engineers) have contributed. Past workshop leaders also include Akos Juhasz, Fergus Feilden of Feilden Fowles, Smith Mordak, Shin Egashira of the Architectural Association, Hannah Durham, Zoe Berman, and Je Ahn of Studio Weave.

The program's founders are Taylor of Invisible Studio, Meredith Bowles, Kate Darby, Gianni Botsford, and Peter Clegg, with early mentorship from Ted Cullinan. The workshop functions as a hands-on pedagogical alternative to traditional studio-based design education — calculation, joinery craft, and material testing happen directly in the field.

What does the film add to the build?

The 2026 session ran a parallel film mentorship program directed by architectural documentarians Nyima Murry and Jim Stephenson. Its goal: lower barriers of entry into architectural cinematography for students from historically underrepresented backgrounds.

An open call selected three architecture students with limited film experience — Tong Hao, Jaime Nelson, and Hamani Altraiji. After technical modules on visual storytelling, equipment rigging, and sound recording, the fellows embedded in the Hooke Park forest for four days.

Working from a documentary brief devised by Taylor himself, the film team tracked the live assembly of Crossing, Lookout, and Horizon. They recorded structural trials, ambient woodland acoustics, and real-time timber manipulation, producing a permanent document of the collective live-build methodology.

The footage captures the unglamorous mechanics of collective construction: teams preparing materials in the workshop, carrying pre-assembled structures to site, and fitting them into place by hand. Even in the woods, hard hats make an appearance.

What does this change for architecture education? The film argues, in effect, that the live-build model — designing with the material in your hands rather than on a screen — remains as viable at 20 as it was at its founding. With a new generation of filmmakers now trained to document it, that methodology has a record built to last longer than the pavilions themselves.