Just 30 per cent visible wood in a room can leave the people inside it calmer, with one Australian importer now taking research on Japan’s sugi cedar and hinoki cypress to architects across the country. That is according to Simon Love, director of Japanese Timber Australia, who told Wood Central’s Jason Ross the two species have “wonderful health and wellbeing properties”.
“The smell of hinoki and sugi reduced blood pressure and created a calm feeling,” Love said, with researchers also finding that “simply having 30 per cent wood visible in a space made people feel more calm”.
In one test, Love said, students sat mathematics exams in a Western-style classroom and in a room lined with sugi, and salivary chromogranin A, a stress marker, was higher in the classroom while the change in the sugi room was “negligible”. “This result indicates that the materials used indoors can allow stressful tasks to be completed with reduced negative physical impact on people,” he said.
People in Western societies spend 90 per cent of their time indoors, Love said, and CSIRO has estimated that poor indoor air may cost Australia as much as $12 billion a year. That estimate dates from 1998, and the Australian Centre for Disease Control is now sponsoring CSIRO to assess the cost afresh, with a report expected later this year.
“A home should be somewhere you can rest and recover,” Love said, and “in effect we were designing with natural materials to support people to live healthier, better, for longer”.
“Sugi and hinoki have anti-microbial properties, so wall panel systems that incorporate slits across the grain of the timber can reduce humidity naturally in summer without mould or mildew forming,” Love said. “In winter when the air is dry they add moisture and the natural aroma of the wood to create a more comfortable and calming environment.”
That research came from a timber centre run by Love’s former employer, which he describes as one of the oldest timber auction houses in Japan, to repeat and confirm published academic studies on the two species. The same group built two display homes at Cameron Park in Lake Macquarie, near Newcastle on the New South Wales coast, and Love achieved CodeMark certification for its building system in Australia and New Zealand.
When the group exited all overseas operations, the centre closed, and Love started Japanese Timber Australia in 2020 to “keep the knowledge gained from the research centre alive in Australia”. Since then the company has presented to architects on “designing with health in mind”, in sessions that count towards their professional development, whilst supplying Japanese timber to distributors across Australia.
Next year Love plans to take 15 to 20 architects from Australia and New Zealand to Japan on a study tour. The aim, he said, is more projects using the Japanese species “for their beauty, functionality and ability to create a healthier environment”.
It comes as four of Japan’s top sugi and hinoki suppliers prepare to present at Wood Central’s Japanese seminar on Monday, with several members of Love’s supply network due to attend. “This would benefit Australians, and our health system, for generations to follow,” he said of the research.
- To find out more about the seminar, which Wood Central is organising for the Japan Wood-Products Export Association and the Japan International Forestry Promotion and Cooperation Center, contact Jason Ross on jason@woodcentral.com.au. For part one of this series, on Japan’s cedar and cypress moving upmarket, click here.
