Johan Wijesinghe
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Forest to Frame
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Forests, supply chains, and buildings are part of the same system. The decisions architects make about materials have consequences that reach back to the land and forward to the communities that depend on it. Forest to Frame was built on that premise.
While at LEVER Architecture, I developed and formalised the platform in collaboration with Sustainable Northwest, One Future, and Ecotrust, with funding from a 2021 USDA Wood Innovations Grant. The platform connects architectural procurement decisions directly to forestry data tracking material origins, supplier networks, land management practices, and transportation impacts within a single framework. Specifying timber well, from the right forests and the right producers, supports resilient landscapes, sustains jobs in forest communities, and reduces the carbon embedded in construction. Forest to Frame made that argument visible and actionable inside a real procurement workflow.
As lead researcher I shaped the research agenda and the data architecture, and led the grant writing that secured the project's funding. Working with Jonathan Heppner and Timothy Cooke at LEVER, One Future on UX and UI, and PAE on sustainability consulting, I structured forestry and supply chain data into a searchable decision-support tool and integrated it with real spec-writing workflows. I worked directly with suppliers to test the model against how procurement actually operates — not how it is assumed to. User testing ensured the platform sat inside design workflows rather than alongside them.
The quality of the architecture is not separable from the quality of the supply chain that produces it. The model is material-agnostic and scalable timber was the starting point, not the limit.
The intellectual property was subsequently acquired by Climate Smart Forestry, where the platform is now in active use by large organisations across the industry.
Partners
Sustainable North West, Eco-Trust
Project Team
Jonathan Heppner, Timothy Cooke, Johan Wijesinghe
UX/UI
Once-Future Office
Design Consultant:
Sustainability Consulting: PAE