Designing with American Hardwoods: A Sustainable, Versatile Material Choice

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Architects and designers have long understood that people respond positively to natural materials in the built environment. Hardwoods add warmth and character, and contribute healthful non-allergenic qualities to homes and workplaces. Since American hardwoods exhibit especially rich diversity in color and grain, they're most often specified where visual appeal and durability are important. Protective finishes enhance the wood's color, texture and grain pattern, and are non-toxic and durable. As a result, hardwood products are a sustainable option, even in areas with heavy wear and stringent care, cleaning and maintenance requirements, such as healthcare settings.

Hardwoods contrast with the "softwoods," or gymnosperms, which are cone-bearing trees with needles, including the fir, pine, hemlock and spruce most often used in construction. Generally, hardwoods are denser and harder than softwoods, although actual resistance to pressure and wear in both groups varies by species.


Floors of locally sourced white oak work sustainably and efficiently with a geothermal radiant heat system at the Girl Scouts' Eberly Family Learning Center in West Virginia.

For this reason, not every American hardwood is suitable for flooring. Those that are hard enough have performed well for centuries. Most applications do not require the extreme hardness exhibited by the tropical woods and grasses, even in heavy traffic areas.

Regarding tropical hardwoods, many of the hardwood species that grow in the world's tropical forests are subjects of special concern because of illegal, unsustainable harvesting and its effects on wild habitats. In contrast, the U.S. Forest Service documents the sustainability of North American hardwoods, where more has grown than has been harvested annually for more than 50 years. (Figure 1) In addition, hardwood harvesting in U.S. forests is subject to federal, state and local laws and regulations that protect water and wildlife.

In an interview appearing in the 2005 white paper series, Material Matters, available atwww.americanhardwoods.org under "Green Design and Building," materials scientist Andrew Dent, director of library and materials research at Material ConneXion, New York, NY, addresses the synthetic substitutes meant to imitate American hardwoods. "The whole point of a composite is putting two dissimilar materials together... basically the perfect composite material is wood. It has the right combination of strengthening fibers and gluey binders to put it all together. So wonderfully reusable and so wonderfully sustainable. Unfortunately the thing they try to replace it with is probably one of the least sustainable materials you're ever going to come across," he says.

 

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Originally published in Architectural Record.
Originally published in October 2005

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