Agroforestry Furniture Collection
Objects / With Mark Tuckey / 2024Spec
Kind: furniture
Design: Bronwen Main, with Mark Tuckey
Imagine if all construction timbers in Australia were grown in a way that regenerated degraded farm soils, improved livestock health, provided biodiversity habitat for endangered species and shaped resilient, beautiful landscapes that stitched together bioregional communities. The Making Of Material explores this possibility through a collection of furniture pieces made from agroforestry timber, designed by Bronwen Main in collaboration with Mark Tuckey and documentary short film by Grace Moore, that captures both process and philosophy.
Over 20% of agricultural land in Australia is affected by salting or other forms of degradation that compromise its use for growing crops and livestock grazing. Much of this land could be remediated by planting native trees, providing supplementary income streams for farmers in the form of valuable timbers and flowers, while providing additional benefits including reducing livestock deaths by sheltering from exposure to sun and wind, improving soil health by holding more water in the landscape and increasing biologically beneficial insect and bird populations, enhancing biodiversity and creating beautiful aesthetic environments across regional Australia.
Leading farmers in the Otway Agroforestry Network have spent 35 years testing methods for planting, managing and monitoring tree plantings interspersed with livestock agriculture. This project was about testing the quality of timber for furniture and carving a premium market pathway for the timbers, an important step in proving the business model of agroforestry to unlock more trees on farms.
Threads
The Making of Material (documentary on the agroforestry growers
Stand Trees (the marketplace this run seeded)
Green School Chair (the same argument for Indonesian forests)
Contact
Most of our projects begin as conversations. If something here has started one, write to frank@mainfrank.com.
A collection designed by Bronwen Main with Mark Tuckey, made from timber grown in agroforestry systems: trees planted through grazing country, where the harvest pays a farmer to keep them standing.
The pieces are made and sold by Mark Tuckey, which is where they belong. We designed them; his workshop builds them and his showrooms carry them.
Where to buy
Threads
Agroforestry Furniture (the project and the film)
Fukuoka spent forty years removing interventions from his farm and finished with yields that matched conventional fields. Do-nothing farming is a misnomer; the method is observation-heavy and intervention-light, and each subtraction had to earn its place over seasons. We seed into standing straw too; we just call it a wall.