Elliot Woolard

Wood, Water and Time
2025 - 2026 

Timber boards are cut parallel to the grain. This makes the most sense for concrete formwork and most timber construction as this means that the timber responds best to moisture, weathering and has a lower propensity to bend/ warp. The texture created by board-marked concrete embodies this aversion to cutting across the grain.

Cutting across the grain reveals lengths of time that has gone into producing this material to us. I investigated how this could be cast into concrete to make clearer their position (and architecture’s position) within longer time.

My technical investigation explored methods of using end-grain timber as concrete casting formwork, and the forms that could be created with a more limited dimension of timber. I varied the timber’s thickness, species, grain direction, and how the formwork was constructed. As a part of the project I did numerous technical drawings describing the construction and detailing of different tests and components.