[Trailer of the documentary]
Woodstories
The documentary ‘Woodstories’, directed by Building Pictures, is a tribute to wood which tells eight stories narrated by eight architects. The story unfolds in different chapters: Memories, Application, Senses, Comfort, Sustainability, Time, Carpenters, and Industry. During the film, the architects – Carlos Azevedo, Diogo Aguiar, Diogo Zenha Morais, Francisco Vieira de Campos, Graça Correia, João Luís Carrilho da Graça, João Mendes Ribeiro, Laura Lupini, Luís Sobral and Manuel Aires Mateus – discuss the importance of wood in Portuguese architecture from the time we were born until the future.
Throughout the documentary, we asked several questions about wood and identified similar points of view between the architects. We create a narrative with these points, and all the invited architects talk to each other about this topic.
In the first chapter, we establish a bridge with the past and reveal some of the childhood memories of the architects' life. In the 'Use' chapter, we verify that the wood's application increased in the structures, coatings, interiors, scenography, and new uses. These applications expanded among the architects in Portugal. As the architect Manuel Aires Mateus says: “What is interesting in our research about wood is that we don’t limit wood to traditional applications, we try to explore all its possibilities, for wood to become a truly central material, in which we really feel we are building in wood”.
In the ‘Senses’ chapter, we can see some examples of how people establish a connection with wood through the gaze, the smell, the sounds, the touch, and “the way the wood reacts to our steps”. In the ‘Comfort’ chapter, we reveal how wood is one of the best choices when we are trying to achieve the idea of comfort in spaces and, specifically, in homes. In the ‘Sustainability’ chapter, we portray how old woods are reused in many projects and, furthermore, wood “is the only natural material that is returned to nature”. In the ‘Time’ chapter, the architects discuss how, over the years, the qualities of wood improve, highlighting the care that this material needs over time. In the ‘Carpenters’ chapter, Manuel Aires Mateus says that “carpentry is the profession that reproduces the most part of the work”.
In the last chapter, among the various architects, the architect João Luís Carrilho da Graça stands out, underlining the advantages of wood in the Industry’s field: “Nowadays wood allows you to follow a universal trend, which is to be able to make a large part of the buildings in factories, in construction companies, and then transport large prefabricated elements which can then constitute a very high percentage of the construction which has great advantages in terms of speed of execution and quality of the final result”.
From chapter to chapter, we discover that the stories of architects are also the stories of all of us because, after all, – and as the architect João Mendes Ribeiro emphasizes: “There is no one who doesn’t like wood”.
WoodStories - Awarded and selected for film festivals
