Outside-In is a winning proposal for the Secret Shelters Exhibition at the Heritage Museum and Gardens in Sandwich, MA, installed in the summer of 2015. Inverting the traditional relationship of a typical tree bench, where one sits with their back to the tree, Outside-In instead refocuses the viewer’s attention toward the Heritage’s cherished tulip tree, creating an intimate space between the viewer and what is being viewed.
Outside-In inverses our usual experience of wood construction. One of the tree’s most recognizable characteristics, the bark, remains visible but is rotated to face inward in the same fashion as the orientation of the installation. The “outside-in” configuration of the bark allows for the utilization of the already cut edge of the waste slab to create the finished edge of each TwMU , or Timber waste Modular Unit (patent pending).
Outside-In was created entirely from waste resulting from the manufacturing and processing of commercial timber products. Waste wood trimmed from logs in the normal milling process as they are rough sawn into lumber, is then cut, rotated, and reassembled to form Outside-In’s basic structural unit.
Traditionally when a tree is processed into building material, approximately 38% of the processed log is waste that is then used in the creation of low-quality secondary wood products. TwMU aspires to maximize this renewable resource and divert this waste material, instead upcycling it into a viable building product, with the added benefit of locking additional atmospheric carbon within the fibers of the material rather than allowing its re-release into the environment.
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