Marking its milestone 20th anniversary, the renowned architectural live-build summer school Studio in the Woods (SiTW) has been commemorated through a new documentary short entitled Crossing, Lookout, Horizon. The film captures the initiative’s 2026 session, hosted within the immersive woodland setting of the Architectural Association’s (AA) Hooke Park campus in Dorset, United Kingdom. Founded two decades ago by Piers Taylor of Invisible Studio, alongside fellow architects Meredith Bowles, Kate Darby, Gianni Botsford, and Peter Clegg—with early mentorship from Ted Cullinan—the program was established to provide a radical, hands-on pedagogical alternative to traditional, computer- and studio-bound architectural education.
Over the past twenty years, Studio in the Woods has evolved from a grassroots workshop into a celebrated fixture of experimental timber architecture. Operating without predetermined or rigid briefs, the annual workshop brings together approximately 50 participants, including architecture students, practicing professionals, and specialized timber fabricators, for an intense, four-day build cycle. Participants are tasked with designing and constructing full-scale, 1:1 structural interventions using timber that has been harvested and milled directly from the surrounding woodland. Sited deep within Hooke Park’s working forest, the 2026 iteration resulted in three distinct site-specific timber installations: Crossing, Lookout, and Horizon. These structures served as testing grounds for material optimization, reciprocal framing techniques, and direct fabrication methods, allowing participants to directly experience the physical realities, constraints, and potentials of working with raw timber.
Architects and Timber Framers Converge for Hands-On Workshops
A cornerstone of the Studio in the Woods ethos is its commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration and direct mentorship. Across its twenty-year history, the initiative has convened an impressive network of leading practitioners, structural engineers, and master timber fabricators to lead its on-site workshops. The program’s distinguished teaching roster over the years reflects its broad influence across the architectural landscape, featuring figures such as Stirling Prize winner Niall McLaughlin, Lebanese-French architect Lina Ghotmeh, and collaborative design practice Architecture 00.
Instruction within the workshop deliberately bridges abstract architectural theory with rigorous structural pragmatism. This approach is anchored by contributions from master timber framer Charley Brentnall, former Hooke Park director Martin Self, Lee Ivett of Baxendale, and structural engineers Tim Lucas of Price & Myers and Toby McClean of Tall Engineers. The teaching body also includes a wide array of past and present workshop leaders, such as 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. By embedding these diverse perspectives directly in the field, the program grounds architectural education in a hands-on synthesis of structural calculation, traditional joinery craft, and real-time material testing.
Film Documents Collective Woodland Construction Process
In tandem with the physical construction of the three timber pavilions, the 2026 iteration of Studio in the Woods expanded its scope to incorporate a specialized film mentorship program. Directed by established architectural documentarians Nyima Murry and Jim Stephenson, the film initiative was explicitly designed to lower barriers of entry into architectural cinematography for students from historically underrepresented backgrounds. Through an open call, three architecture students with limited prior film experience—Tong Hao, Jaime Nelson, and Hamani Altraiji—were selected as fellows to document the workshop.
The fellowship began with intensive technical modules covering visual storytelling, professional equipment rigging, and field sound recording. Following this preparation, the student film crew embedded themselves within the Hooke Park working forest for the duration of the four-day build cycle. Working from a documentary brief devised by SiTW co-founder Piers Taylor of Invisible Studio, the film team tracked the live assembly of Crossing, Lookout, and Horizon. Their cameras captured structural trials, the ambient acoustic qualities of the woodland, and the physical realities of real-time timber manipulation. The resulting documentary short serves as a permanent, moving-image record of the collective live-build methodology that has defined Studio in the Woods for the past two decades, preserving the ephemeral spirit of the woodland workshop for future generations of designers and builders.
