Urban Timber Consulting

Bringing locally salvaged wood into the built environment

Urban forests produce an extraordinary material resource. Every year, thousands of trees across Southern California are removed due to development, disease, storms, or age. Most of this wood is chipped, burned, or discarded.

Lucid Dreaming works to change that.

Through relationships with arborists, mills, and material networks, we source and steward select urban-salvaged timbers — transforming them into furniture, architectural elements, and material packages for residential and commercial projects.

We partner with architects, interior designers, and FF&E teams to integrate urban timber into projects early in the design process, ensuring the material is specified, fabricated, and delivered successfully.

Why Urban Timber

Urban-salvaged wood carries a story of place. Each tree is part of the landscape where people live, work, and gather.

Using urban timber offers several advantages:

• Local material provenance
• Reduced material waste
• Unique grain and scale not found in commodity lumber
• Alignment with sustainability and circular design goals
• Opportunity for project storytelling

Urban timber brings authenticity and depth to a project in ways that conventional materials rarely can.

How We Work

Lucid Dreaming acts as a material consultant and fabrication partner, helping project teams navigate the realities of working with urban-salvaged wood.

We support projects through:

Material sourcing
Identifying and securing select urban timbers suitable for furniture, millwork, and architectural applications.

Specification guidance
Advising architects and designers on species, slab formats, structural considerations, and appropriate applications.

Design collaboration
Working alongside project teams to translate concepts into buildable pieces that honor the material.

Fabrication
Producing bespoke furniture, tables, benches, and objects through the Lucid Dreaming studio.

Network coordination
Connecting projects with trusted mills, drying facilities, and fabricators when larger material quantities are required.

Partnering Early

Urban timber works best when it is introduced early in the design process. Because each tree and slab is unique, early collaboration allows the design to respond to the material rather than forcing the material to fit a predetermined specification.

Lucid Dreaming helps project teams identify opportunities and secure material before fabrication begins.

Collaborate With Us

If you’re working on a project where material story and locality matter, we would be happy to explore how urban timber could be integrated.

Whether as a fabrication partner or material consultant, Lucid Dreaming helps bring locally sourced wood into meaningful built environments.