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Mountain Pine Beetles: Epidemic or Opportunity?

By Murrye Bernard

The Mountain Pine Beetle is altering the landscape of British Columbia’s forests, infesting pine trees and staining the wood blue. It is estimated that within the next 10 years, 80 percent of the pine forests in British Columbia will be infested, as warm winters have allowed the beetles to multiply at alarming rates. Since there is no solution to this problem currently, the wood industry must develop a new system to harvest the wood, which remains structurally stable if harvested within three years of infestation.

Prototype 02—a variation on the typical New Orleans camelback home

Photo Courtesy of Abdel Munem Amin and David Yi-Jen Tseng

In 2007, designs by Tseng and Amin were displayed at Design Vancouver and the AIBC Gallery Show.

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While some view the Mountain Pine Beetle situation as an epidemic, others recognize an opportunity for architects and designers to create a market for a new and unique product. A competition, sponsored by the Architectural Institute of British Columbia (AIBC), the Interior Designers Institute of British Columbia (IDIBC), BCWOOD, and The Vancouver Sun, was held as part of the Interior Design & Urban Living Expo (http://www.dvexpo.ca) in Vancouver, and eight finalists were chosen to create consumer facing or architectural applications for the wood. Competition organizers hoped to give pine wood an image overhaul in the same way that Alder wood, which was considered a “weed wood” 15 years ago, is now popular with designers.

Most participants designed furniture using the Mountain Pine Beetle wood, including chairs, room partitions, and coffee tables. Vancouver-based intern architects Abdel Munem Amin and David Yi-Jen Tseng created the only architectural response to the competition—a modular stair titled Six Steps: Blue Modular. In line with the competition’s call for mass-market applications, the stair can be reconfigured to accommodate any orientation or distance between floors. “We played around with the texture of the stained wood to maximize the uniqueness … [it] adds a new dimension to the story that this wood tells,” Amin explained.

Amin and Yi-Jen Tseng met while attending architecture school at McGill University and hope someday to form a partnership and establish an international practice that combines their passions for discovering new cultures and places and designing regionally sensitive architecture. Abdel, a Czech-born Palestinian who has spent time in Japan and Jordan, is intrigued by the psychological implications of space. Born and raised in Taiwan, Yi-Jen Tseng traveled and worked as a freelance graphic designer in Asia for several years, designing CD albums, logos, and packaging, and Web sites, in addition to his architectural experience with residential interiors and boutique hotels.

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