Wood Awards 2023 launches call for entries

The call for entries for the Wood Awards 2023 is now live! Enter your wood-centric building, furniture or product before 23 June 2023 and have your work recognised as the best in the UK.

Architects, engineers, installers, furniture makers, product designers – or anyone else with an exceptional timber project – can now enter via the Wood Awards website – free of charge – for a chance to receive a highly coveted Wood Award.

Since 1971, the Wood Awards has been the UK’s premier competition in the timber design and construction industries. By recognising and rewarding outstanding timber design, craftsmanship and installation – and showing the many ways that timber transforms and enriches our lives – the Wood Awards acts as a vehicle to drive positive change in our built environment.

Submissions are split into Buildings and Furniture & Product, with categories including ‘Commercial & Leisure’, ‘Education & Public Sector’, ‘Interiors’, ‘Private’, ‘Small Project’, as well as ‘Bespoke’, ‘Production’, and ‘Student’, respectively.

This covers a wide range of projects, alongside one additional category introduced in 2022: ‘Restoration and Reuse’, which will recognise the ways timber is preserving and enhancing our architectural heritage – and importantly – reducing the embodied carbon of construction.

The prestigious Gold Award is given to the standout project that the judges deem to be the overall winner-of-winners. As well as the Gold Award, other awards that can be given at the judges discretion include the Structural Award and, for the first time, a newly introduced Sustainability Award.

The Wood Awards’ is unique. It is a not-for-profit: purely aiming to recognise excellence. It also features an elite independent judging panel that assesses all submitted entries – and visits each shortlisted project in person. This makes the Wood Awards an exceptionally rigorous competition.

Judging panels are led by Jim Greaves of Hopkins Architects, for Buildings, and design critic, curator and journalist, Corinne Julius, for Furniture & Product.

Jim Greaves, Chair of Buildings judges, said, “This year we have a new ‘Restoration and Re-use category that will recognise the work of designers and constructors who have chosen to restore and adapt existing buildings. We have also asked Neil Smith, of Max Fordham, to assist the judges in this assessment of the environment performance of the entries.

“With each year the ambition and breadth of the Wood Awards entries grows, and I would positively encourage everyone involved in an interesting timber project to participate.”

Corinne Julius, Chair of Furniture judges, comments, “The Wood Awards are aimed at encouraging the use and appreciation of wood by the public, industry, makers and students. We hope that the Awards promote a renewed approach of this beautiful, varied, sustainable and renewable material. Wood is the material of the future.”

David Hopkins, CEO of Timber Development UK, comments, “Timber Development UK are delighted to be leading on the Wood Awards 2023 after a stellar first year of organisation for 2022. We want to encourage more people to use wood in all kinds of design projects in order to try and decarbonise the material world – and believe that the first step to doing this is to inspire people with incredible designs.”