We take how we build buildings for granted. It may take a smart kid in a children’s story to ask why our rules are based not on logic, but laziness.

Ben and Sven: team building

Fifty years ago, on the very same spring morning, Ben and Sven germinated, 

Ben

Ben, a Scots Pine, poked through a pile of dead leaves in a woodland, near the village of Horningsham, in the south west of Great Britain. 

Ben was surrounded by lots of other kinds of trees, some old, some young, with shrubs, insects, bird and other forest animals for company. 

As the spring sunshine unfurled his first leaves, Ben realised he was growing just by a wire fence separating a Builder’s Yard from a Forestry Yard.

He’d spend his life watching the comings and growings on either side of the wire fence.

Sven

Sven, a Sitka Spruce, emerged in a tray of soil, on a bench, in a greenhouse, of the nursery, in a plantation, near the town of Jokkmokk, in the north of Sweden.

Sven was one in a row of Sitka seedlings, growing by a Sitka plantation that was about to be felled.

As the spring sunshine unfurled his first leaves, Sven realised he and his fellow-Sitka-seedlings were being grown to replace the old trees that surrounded the nursery. 

He’d spend his life in rows of other Sitkas, exactly the same age, just by a sign saying ‘Polcirkeln’, Swedish for ‘Arctic Circle’.

Ben and Sven’s First Life: Trees

Horningsham and Jokkmokk are separated by the North Sea, 15 degrees of latitude, and 2,000 kilometres.

As year followed year, Ben and Sven turned from seedlings to whips, from whips to saplings, from saplings to young trees, from young trees to mature trees. 

Every year, Ben and Sven added another ring to their girth, as they pushed out limb after limb, each bristling with green needles to collect the light reaching their patch of the forest floor. 

In Horningsham, Ben saw many different animals and plants. He learned from the old, and taught the young. He could see how long-term residents of the forest got on with newcomers and visitors. There was always something or someone to see, on both sides of the wire fence.

In Jokkmokk, Sven saw rows and rows of other Sitkas, growing steadily in a neat grid as the seasons passed. The bare earth of the plantation floor was home to few other tenants, and visitors were rare. These Sitkas, all knew each other well, having been germinated in the same greenhouse, all in rows. 

Ben and Sven both knew they were fine trees, growing straight and true. Year after year, ring by ring, light brown outer sapwood circles turned into dark brown heartwood. Their trunks grew wider, their crowns rose higher.

Ben and Sven enjoyed their life outdoors in the woods, but both knew this was only their First Life.

One day, men with chainsaws would arrive, to begin their Second Life.

The Forest Network, relayed through their root systems, told them what happens next.

Ben & Sven’s Second Life: Timber

When the men with chainsaws thought they were ready, they’d transform trees into timber, ending their first life and starting their Second.

Their limbs would be removed. Their tapering trunks cut into regular lengths. They’d be stacked in piles by the side of the paths along which the men with chainsaws drove their trucks.

Vertical trees would become horizontal logs. They’d lie in the woods a while, side-by-side in regular lengths, maybe long enough to see another tree start its First Life in the space they’d left in the forest.

After a while, the trucks would return. 

They’d be hoisted aboard, and driven to a sawmill. There, they’d learn which Second Life they would have.

Straight Bits

Their straightest bits would become building materials.

Sliced into regular planks, beams, joists and rafters, they’d become part of something bigger, as walls, roofs, ceilings, frames and supports. Vertically, horizontally and diagonally, they’d spend decades, even centuries, sheltering people, animals, and useful objects. 

Smaller straight bits might become tables and chairs, desks and cupboards, handles or toys.

Wonky Bits

The wonkier, irregular, leftover bits would become fuel.

Cut and split into logs, or compressed as sawdust into pellets, they’d join the wobbly, knobbly limbs they’d been separated from in the forest as firewood.

Once they’d done their warming, part of them would go up in smoke to spend a thousand years in the sky as a gas, the rest would be buried as ash.

Leftover Bits

What remained would be thrown into the sawmill’s chipper.

Woodchips could become paper or cardboard, to be buried as rubbish. Or they might become mulch, spread around paths and gardens.

Either way, the remains would slowly return to the soil, and maybe end up in another tree, one day.

After fifty years, Ben and Sven, felt ready for their Second Life. They knew that whichever route they took, they’d eventually return to the ground.

Ben and Sven, tall and straight, both hoped some of them would end up as part of a building.

It would be fun to see what happens inside buildings, protecting people, animals and things from the wind, rain and snow.

Ben Waits For His Fate

Ben didn’t need the Forest Network to know all this.

From his spot at the edge of the forest, by the wire fence, where he’d germinated fifty years ago, Ben saw his possible Second Lives every day.

All day, everyday, people would come into the Builder’s Yard, taking away wood to build houses to shelter people and animals.

And all day, everyday, people would come into the Forestry Yard, taking away logs to burn in their fireplaces and mulch to spread on their gardens.

Ben waited, wondering which side of the wire fence the men with the chainsaws would leave him, and what would happen to his heartwood.

Would he spend generations supporting a building?

Or would he disappear, log by log, up a chimney, in a puff of smoke?

Sven Discovers His Fate

One day, the men with chainsaws drove their trucks from Jokkmokk. 

They cut down rows and rows of Sitkas, including Sven.

They removed their limbs, and cut their tapering trunks into regular lengths.

They hoisted Sven and his Sitka forest-mates onto a truck.

They drove the truck to a sawmill.

The sawmill cut them into planks, beams, joists and rafters.

A Certifier, thudded ‘C16’ and C24’ stamps into an inkpad before marking each piece. Sven was proud to be stamped ‘C24’, before being shrink-wrapped on a pallet.

The pallet was loaded into a container.

The container was hoisted onto a truck.

The truck drove to a port.

The container was hoisted onto a ship.

The ship sailed to another port. 

The container was lowered onto another truck.

The other truck drove the container to a warehouse.

The warehouse unpacked the pallets and waited for another truck.  

The another truck was loaded with different pallets.

The truck drove to a Timber Yard.

Ben and Sven, United

Now, it just so happened, that the Timber Yard where the pallet containing Sven was driven, was the one surrounded by the wire fence by which Ben was still living his First Life.

And it just so happened that the pallet containing Sven, now cut into lengths of building timber, was placed right by that wire fence, a few feet from Ben.

It was getting dark when the shrink wrap was removed. The Timber Yard was soon locked up for the night.

Ben greeted Sven, wishing him well in his second life.

‘Thank you’, said Sven (like all Swedish trees, Sven spoke excellent English).

Ben and Sven spent the night swapping stories about their First Lives.

Ben imagined what it would be like to grow up in rows of other Scots Pines, all the same age, with a bare forest floor.

Sven imagined what it would be like to grow up in a higgledy-piggledy forest, with lots of different types of trees of different ages, with lots of different animals and plants.

The Builder, The Homeowner and The Homeowner’s Little Girl

The next day, a Builder and a Homeowner holding the hand of a Little Girl walked right up to Sven’s pallet.

Sven and Ben could hear every word they said.

Pointing at Sven’s pallet, The Builder said ‘Here’s the timber to build your little girl’s bedroom.’

The Little Girl smiled, imagining her new bedroom, all to herself. 

The Homeowner looked at the sign in front of the pallet, removed a piece of paper from a coat pocket, and pointed to it, saying ‘But this is much more expensive than your quote for our extension!’.

‘True’, replied the Builder, ‘Prices are going up for everything, faster than ever. They never seem to come down.’ 

‘Must we use this timber?’ asked the Homeowner. ‘What’s so special about it?’. 

‘I was taught to use this Sitka timber as an apprentice,’ replied the  Builder. ‘Lovely stuff. It grows in the Arctic, nice and slow, so the rings are close together. Hardly a knot in it.’ 

‘All the way from Arctic Sweden’, ruminated the Homeowner, examining Sven’s fine grain. ‘That’s a long way to come to build a child’s bedroom over here. All those trucks, and containers, and ships. No wonder it’s so expensive’.

‘Timber doesn’t grow on trees’, said the Builder, without appearing to be making a joke. ‘There’s nothing we can do. It’s just the way things are’.

The Little Girl stopped smiling.

‘Timber, cement, steel, tiles, plumbing, electrics, labour, professional services, council fees…’, listed the Homeowner, gloomily. ‘…the bank may not lend me the money I need for this extension’. 

‘Bank loans – tell me about it!’, replied the Builder, equally gloomy. 

The Little Girl looked up, expectantly, but instead of telling the Builder about it, the Homeowner asked a question. 

‘Can’t we use something cheaper?‘.

The Builder shrugged. ‘Maybe, if you had the money to build it yourself’.

The Homeowner looked at the Builder, puzzled. So did the Little Girl.

The Builder sighed. ‘This timber is certified C24. C24 certification comes with a warranty. A warranty means the insurers will insure your extension. The insurance means the bank will lend you the money. The bank won’t lend you the money unless they can blame someone else if the extension falls down’.

‘Huh.’ said the Homeowner. ‘A loan’s not much use if I can’t pay it back’.

The Builder said nothing.

The Homeowner frowned. So did the Little Girl. After a while, the Homeowner asked ‘Would the extension fall down if we didn’t use C24 timber?’.

‘Dunno’, said the Builder. ‘Never used anything else’.

They stood a while in silence.

The Little Girl tugged at the Homeowner’s sleeve.

She pointed at Ben, the other side of the fence. 

‘Why not use that tree?’, she asked.

***

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