Short abstract

Bark beetle outbreaks contributed to a massive dieback of spruce in Germany. This proposal examines the insect’s role in timber material flows. Framed as disaster, it drives uncertainty yet prompts shifts to more diverse forests and reconsideration of agency beyond external human planning.

Long abstract

Timber construction is increasingly promoted as a key solution for making (urban) construction more climate-friendly. Beneath this seemingly straightforward solution, however, lie significant uncertainties related to the forests supplying the timber. For the tree species most commonly used in construction, conifers, particularly spruce, one key source of uncertainty is the outbreak of bark beetles. Although these insects play an important role in decomposing wood within diverse forest ecosystems, they have gained the status of invasive in commercial monoculture forests. The combination of single-species stands, climate-change and storms has enabled their rapid spread, leading to the loss of approximately half a million hectares of spruce forest in Germany between 2018 and 2021.

As a trained architect, I investigate the material flows of timber through an STS perspective. Drawing on ongoing ethnography of German forest region of Sauerland, I examine how bark beetle outbreaks are framed as disasters yet also drive the transition toward more resilient mixed forests. The response to the outbreaks is not purely managerial but deeply cultural and historical, rooted in the understanding of trees as resources, destined to fulfil specific goals and intensified by ambitions to expand timber construction. The beetle’s presence thus prompts a reconsideration of agency within the material flow, resonating with Barad’s notion of intra-action rather than externally imposed human, predictable planning (Barad, 2007).