The artistic research will work with aesthetic experiments and stories from forest, forestry and the saw line. The focus is birch and birch forest, with its rich, but to a large extend lost tradition for use, with its strong and special qualities and as underdog position to spruce and pine. A continuous underlying question is how the forest as place, ecosystem, production site, cultural heritage and work environment can be closer and expressed connected to materials, things, and building. When we build, we build both the place where resources are added and the place they are taken from. I am interested in forest as nature and industry, but even more as culture.

Ola Sendstad is an architect and organic farmer. He got a master’s in architecture from The Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 2011 and have since then run his own practice. Through installations, interventions, publications, exhibitions, and events he works with questions around our physical environment’s usefulness, inherent qualities and collective and individual values, often with a starting point in cultural heritage.