The American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) has collaborated with industrial design students of the Royal College of Art of London to produce the 12 seats on display during the London Design Festival.  Under the guidance of the tutor Sebastian Wrong (Established & Sons) and Harry Richardson(Committee), the use of wood as a material and the related impact during the product life cycle were added to the Product Design course program, and the students met the challenge of designing a chair or a functional seat using a selected type of wood, one of twenty American hardwood species available on the market. The projects were transformed into functioning prototypes with the help of Benchmark, a company recognized on an international level for its ability in working with wood and for its lengthy collaboration with the designer Terence Conran. At the beginning of July the students camped out on Conran’s lawn to go to the Benchmark facility each day, where with the help of highly skilled craftsmen, directed by Sean Sutcliffe, they were able to transform their ideas into real objects. AHEC also supplied the students with the data and the procedures to conduct Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of their projects, for greater awareness of the environmental impact of their work. The Out of the Woods seating series will be shown at the Victoria & Albert Museum during the London Design Festival, until 23 September 2012. www.americanhardwood.org.