Joining the Wood Awards building panel in 2025 is the founding partner and director of Knox Bhavan Architects, Sasha Bhavan.
Practising for over 30 years, Sasha is responsible for many beautiful and award-winning projects, including new cafés and public hubs, works on listed buildings, and a number of acclaimed new houses.
In this interview, she shares her insights into why wood is a critical and rewarding material for designers to contend with now, and which qualities she will be looking out for in entries this year!
WA: What led you to want to become a judge for the Wood Awards?
SB: As a practice we have admired, respected, and entered the Wood Awards for decades now and I was delighted to be asked to join the judging panel.
It’s a joy and a pleasure to join well-organised visits to excellent and interesting buildings, with a knowledgeable team who all bring something to the discussion.
Visiting good buildings is always an enjoyable, inspiring, informing, and invigorating experience.
WA: What are the qualities you will be looking out for in Wood Awards projects?
SB: In my view, to win an award, a building/project must be outstanding (not just good): it should demonstrate what is possible and help inspire and lift the bar for everyone.
It should show how to use timber beautifully and show what can be done.
WA: Why is wood an important construction material now?
SB: So many reasons.
It’s such an adaptable material with a multitude of potential uses. By that, I mean that there is such a spectrum present in the world of wood in terms of appearance, durability, and strength.
Strong and structural, it can be used in reassuring hefty sections or laminated for length and strength. Used as just a few-millimetres-thick-veneer, it can bring warmth, colour, variety, and interest – and reduce the maintenance burden of frequent redecoration. Even the cut of the section of wood – whether its burr, heart, or straight grain – fast-growing or hard as nails; every attribute can be visually exploited to enrich the construction.
Joints can be celebrated and expressed, so fully and beautifully described at the current Japanese exhibition at Japan House London.
Such a valuable resource, timber has been reused throughout history, for example, de-commissioned warships being reused to form the structure of timber-frame houses in the sixteenth/seventeenth centuries.
Under this umbrella material ‘wood’ the potential and possibilities are infinite. And of course, if well managed, it’s a sustainable resource that gives back and won’t run out.
WA: What changes do you hope to see in architectural design in the coming years?
SB: It would be great to see an open-minded approach to the use of timber. It is demoralising to see, for example, the reluctance of the insurance sector, and resulting local authorities forbidding the use of such a useful and sustainable material for mistakenly risk-averse reasons. I would like to see this addressed and I applaud the pioneering architects, engineers, and designers out there already addressing this.
The potential of timber/wood as a renewable, appropriate material for many building types, from small-scale houses to multi-storey buildings, is currently underexploited.
WA: Finally, what makes the Wood Awards special?
SB: It is one of the few awards processes where all the short-listed buildings are visited, reflected in the calibre of winners.
The awards celebration is a pleasure to attend, properly celebrating both shortlisted projects and winners in a fabulous, appropriate venue without extortionate fees to enter or attend.
For these reasons and more the Wood Awards is well respected within the construction industry.
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