Interview with dRMM, BbN Frontrunner of the Year 2025

In 2025, Built by Nature named dRMM Studios our inaugural Frontrunner of the Year, recognising their commitment to advancing the use of timber and biobased materials through design, research and advocacy. Active across both our UK and Germany networks, dRMM stood out not only for pushing the boundaries of what can be built with timber, but helping to build the evidence, connections and conversations needed to drive wider change. 

Almost a year on, our UK Networks Lead Meena Kamath sat down with Jonas Lencer and Finbar Charleson to reflect on what this recognition has meant to them, the experiences that shaped their approach, and their ambitions for the future of timber and biobased construction. 

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Meena: Looking back over the past year, what has being named Built by Nature’s Frontrunner of the Year meant for dRMM? 

Jonas: This award really felt like the first time we’ve been recognised for the way we work, rather than for a particular project or the results of our work. At dRMM, our approach to our work is really important and links all the different activities we undertake: research, design, making, but also trying to convince other people to build with nature-based materials. 

Finbar: It’s meant an awful lot to dRMM and to me personally. I’ve seen from the outset how we’ve evolved to incorporate more research into the way we work, through some of the projects we’ve collaborated on with Built by Nature as well as others. This has become a really integral part of how we think and work across the studio, so it feels like the award recognises that in a holistic way. 

What advice would you give to organisations that are just beginning their journey with timber and biobased construction? 

Jonas: Biobased materials in general, and timber specifically, aren’t materials you can simply replace like for like in your usual design process. You need to look at them holistically and understand how the entire system works. 

We encourage people to start by understanding where the tree comes from, what properties different species have and how they contribute – or don’t – to biodiversity and the general health of the planet. And then, we can start to make things. 

As a studio, we’ve always learned by doing. We were never afraid of testing new ideas, or to start small. I think that’s a really good recipe: start with a small, new idea rather than trying to implement straight away into a big project – we can then use that learning as projects scale. 

Finbar: For designers, developers and investors starting on this journey, the first thing I would say is that it’s a really exciting path that we’re all on here at dRMM so I encourage others to come along on that journey. But it isn’t just about understanding the properties or characteristics of a particular material, it’s about having a lens into the industry.  Working with timber and biobased materials allows you to think very differently and ask important questions about how and why we build. 

What first inspired your interest in designing with timber and other biobased materials, and what continues to motivate you today? 

Jonas: Personally, I was always interested in timber and making things. I grew up as a maker and forester, and then studied architecture.  Whilst studying, I was struck by the complete absence of nature-based materials or any learning about local economy, circularity or regenerative design.  

When I came to London to join dRMM and met Alex de Rijke, it was the first time in my architectural career that I felt able to bring my personal interest in making and nature together with architecture. That was a really exciting moment. 

The second big moment for me was the realisation that it’s not only nice to build with timber, but it’s also essential – not only to fight climate change but also to help us reach a point where we really work in conjunction with nature.  I fundamentally believe that is only possible with biobased materials. 

And that’s given my career new purpose and led to some big questions.  How can our work help increase forest cover, not through monoculture plantations, but through biodiversity and climate-resilient forestry? How can we bring that thinking into the construction industry and move towards regenerative architecture? 

It’s not easy, but the whole team has embraced it, and I’m really inspired by the new generation coming through and actively choosing to follow this path. 

Finbar: For me, it started with the realisation that focusing on timber didn’t narrow my interests as a designer; it actually expanded them. Within this one topic of biobased materials, we find ourselves exploring technical issues, complex supply chains, communities and so many diverse themes, processes and outcomes. 

And that’s really why I came to architecture in the first place. I was never particularly interested in only designing buildings of a certain type or style. It’s all these systems, themes and impacts that I think are so important. 

What continues to inspire and motivate me is the idea that, through the way we think, draw and work in the practice, we have this through-line to the natural world. 

You talked about the newer generation of architects showing more interest in regenerative design approaches.  Why do you think that is? 

Jonas: It’s partly the way they are now taught but I also think the new generations truly believe that they have to do something about climate change, about social divides, about the extinction of species.  These younger architects join us with a real sense of purpose, and we don’t need to convince them to join the movement.  By giving them space to follow the right opportunities, we see them focussing not just on biobased materials but also on social issues, circularity, local economy.  They bring a different way of seeing the industry to our studio, to our profession.  I find it very inspiring, a glimmer of hope, and I always feel I can learn a lot from the way they think and work. 

Finbar: Parallel to dRMM I lecture at universities and work with a lot of young people.  There has definitely been a cultural shift in how they approach design.  There’s this interesting and rich tension around the idea that we work in an industry that is highly extractive but also has so much scope for positive change.  Some of the most difficult and complex questions we grapple with come from these young future architects and it’s exactly the kind of problem we love to explore and hopefully one day solve. 

Your work spans both pioneering buildings and research. Is there a project or piece of research that best captures dRMM’s approach to advancing timber and biobased construction? 

Jonas: For me, it’s the project we’re currently exhibiting at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which allowed us to bring together research about forestry and timber with developing prototypes and ideas, as well as design and spatial arrangement. 

This project is about trying to visually explain the big questions about how we should live and how we should build, and to attempt to distil that into one exhibition. That was really exciting because it brings together so many aspects of our work. 

Research allows us to innovate much quickly and bring that back into the design process to advance the way we build.  Rather than starting with a project and then analysing what we’ve learned, we’ve turned the process on its head at dRMM: we start with research, innovation in products and materials and the design and making process. Then we test things through prototypes, installations, exhibitions or real buildings, and analyse those again to push the research further. 

It’s not easy and it’s often frustrating because it doesn’t go fast enough – but we’re eternal optimists! 

Finbar: I agree.  Thinking about the last decade at dRMM, you can draw an interesting through-line between projects and research that have informed each other. 

After the studio was recognised with the Stirling Prize in 2017 for Hastings Pier, we started to embrace some of these tricky questions around biobased construction and more innovative ways of working.  

We then had the Forest of Fabrication exhibition in 2019, around the time of some major climate protests in the UK.  That marked a moment when we became more embedded in networks like Built by Nature and developed relationships with academics and industry partners. We’ve undertaken research including Measuring Mass Timber with Edinburgh Napier University, and all of that has culminated in the project currently open to the public at the V&A.  

Jonas: It’s also worth stressing the importance of collaboration. We’re part of the Built by Nature networks in both the UK and Berlin, which gives us access to exciting collaborators working in very different contexts. 

The architect has evolved to become a collaborator. We can’t simply draw what we think buildings should be; we have to work across different disciplines to make sure our buildings have the most positive impact they can have. 

That seems particularly prevalent in timber construction. There are a lot of people who are open to innovation and collaboration and who sit at the forefront of changing our industry. That’s why it’s such a good lens to work through, and why we really enjoy being part of Built by Nature’s network of collaborators. 

Many countries across Europe and beyond face a housing crisis. How can timber and other biobased materials help us deliver more – and better – homes while reducing the environmental impact of construction? 

Jonas: Biobased materials will have to play a major role because both housing and biobased materials are, by definition, local issues. 

With housing, we need to look at the local market and society, how different cities work, land availability, housing needs and the cultural context. Similarly, the biobased industry and material supply need to evolve around local supply chains. There’s a real opportunity to work with local microclimates, different soils and different species, and link those with local skills and traditions. 

We can grow an economy that supports housing and the growth of cities while working in unison with local people and the local economy. We shouldn’t see separate problems – growing forests, creating employment for young people in industries that can survive AI and climate change, and supplying regenerative buildings for people to inhabit – they’re all connected. If we think about these things locally and together, there’s a massive opportunity for our sector. 

Finbar: We’re seeing some really positive signals. Our Berlin studio is working on large housing projects in Brandenburg. Here in the UK, we’re working with clients such as fellow Built by Nature Frontrunner Bywater on timber housing in south-west London. We’re also seeing appetite among larger housebuilders to shift from a relatively small percentage of timber-frame housing towards much greater adoption. 

The appetite is certainly growing within the design community to do this in the right way. Through organisations like Built by Nature, we can help shape and define that transition, so that we neither look at timber as a panacea for all the problems of the built environment nor rush towards solutions that create unforeseen impacts further down the line. 

If you could change one thing to accelerate the uptake of timber and biobased construction, what would it be? 

Finbar: I believe we can accelerate the uptake of timber and biobased construction in the UK but it might not be through the ways people expect.  As Jonas has alluded to, many of the solutions are local. Focusing on ground-up development of the industry has the potential to shape ecosystems as well as the skills and broader communities they serve. 

This means more vertical integration and better understanding of the existing interests and skills we have in the UK. Through networks like Built by Nature, we should be joining those dots: making sure architects speak more to foresters, designers ask the right questions of their construction teams, and clients are sufficiently informed to navigate issues around insurance and technical delivery.  The key is communication to make all of that happen. 

Jonas: We also need some help from legislation. We need reliable guidance on how to build in timber. That’s something we see elsewhere in Europe and sometimes miss in the UK: codes and government guidance that people can rely on, which say, “this is how you do it and this is safe.” That would support much broader uptake of timber construction. 

We also need to support efforts to recognise the carbon sequestered in timber, and we need to see how that could be monetised.  At the moment, some clients won’t use timber because it’s more expensive, but less environmentally damaging materials should be less expensive. If there’s a mechanism through which government can help make that more affordable, that would be very welcome and would help us not only build the right things, but build them from the right materials.