Where nature meets heritage: Urban Nature Project wins Gold at Wood Awards 2025

An enchanting transformation of the Natural History Museum’s grounds – including a new café and education building – has been named the UK’s best new timber project, winning the prestigious Gold Award at the Wood Awards 2025.

Urban Nature Project by Feilden Fowles. Photo © Jim Stephenson

Sensitively integrating two new buildings within the relandscaped museum gardens, the Urban Nature Project, led by Feilden Fowles, is a triumph of sustainable, landscape-led development.

Five acres of underused garden have been reimagined as an oasis of urban nature, telling the story of planetary change over time. Nestled within this verdant setting are two timber-and-stone buildings: the Garden Kitchen, a visitor café and the Nature Activity Centre, which provides spaces for youth learning and scientific research.

The café combines a Douglas fir glulam frame with a load-bearing masonry façade and features a stepped roof with glazed lantern and operable panels for natural ventilation. The education pavilion adopts a low, barn-like form with long elevations and an asymmetric pitched roof crafted from solid Douglas fir and clad with western red cedar shingles. The striking overhang provides sheltered external seating and celebrates rainwater collection. In both buildings, the timber structures are carefully detailed, efficient and beautifully expressed throughout.

Photo © Kendal Noctor – Trustees of The Natural History Museum – Feilden Fowles

Designed to have a positive environmental impact and inspire deeper engagement with nature, these low-energy buildings use locally sourced, low-impact materials, including UK-grown Douglas fir and British limestone. The Urban Nature Project stands as an exemplar of low-embodied-carbon construction that strengthens local supply chains and celebrates vernacular craft.

The timber structures were designed by Feilden Fowles with specialist subcontractor Xylotek and structural engineering by engineersHRW. The buildings were constructed by Walter Lilly, with joinery by SP Joinery and timber supplied by East Brothers Ltd and Marley. Landscape design was led by J&L Gibbons, with wider multidisciplinary input from Max Fordham and Gitta Gschwendtner.

Jim Greaves, principal of Hopkins Architects and lead Buildings judge, said: “Feilden Fowles’ scheme has transformed the approach to the Natural History Museum, creating a journey through geological time with a series of outdoor living galleries. Sitting calmly within this setting are two new timber buildings that complement the Waterhouse masterpiece behind them.

Photo © Kendal Noctor – Trustees of The Natural History Museum – Feilden Fowles

“The project exemplifies environmental sensitivity and thoughtful timber detailing. Throughout, the timber is visible yet protected – light, elegant and crafted using simple, economic joinery to create legible, highly refined buildings that enhance their landscape and provide valuable public spaces.”

The Wood Awards building judges – a team of leading professionals chaired by Jim Greaves – visited all 20 shortlisted buildings before selecting the winner, making it one of the most rigorous design competitions in the UK.

David Hopkins, CEO of Timber Development UK (lead organiser of the Wood Awards), added: “The UK’s long and proud tradition of timber construction is powerfully reflected in this year’s Gold Award winner. The project brings our natural heritage – sustainable forestry, healthy woodlands and exceptional craftsmanship – into the heart of our national heritage in an outstanding public and educational environment.

“I congratulate the entire Urban Nature Project team and applaud all entrants to the 2025 Wood Awards, who collectively show how timber can support the transition to a low-carbon built environment while delivering places of remarkable beauty.”

For more information on the 2025 Wood Award winners, visit www.woodawards.com.