TFG Events & Workshops

Rick Collins

President

Trillium Dell

Practical Reconstruction: Historically Sensitive Repairs & Restorations
Practical Reconstruction discusses techniques that timber framers, building professionals, or building stewards can use to help their teams/clients plan and execute thoughtful, historically-sensitive repairs and restorations. This methodology was initially developed to respond to an overwhelming desire to preserve or repair “at-risk” historic timber frame structures in the Midwest (often owned by underfunded organizations or private owners, minor in national significance or scale, but of huge local and regional significance). We now use this model exclusively as a means to provide efficient, engineered solutions that consider and balance a structure’s history, future health, material life cycles, sustainability, and functional needs. We’ll review a broad range of completed projects to illustrate.

Rick Collins is recognized for his expertise in both the history and the future of timber frame building. His portfolio encompasses visionary buildings that redefine the role of wood in the built environment, as well as authentic restoration and preservation work Rick is a structural timber expert, Journey worker timber framer, metalworker, mechanic, educator, writer, and farmer. He is committed to the Preservation & Continuation of our built and natural heritage. He has a BS in Forest Science and served in the USMCR as a Combat Engineer. He is also a self-taught scholar in the methods and tooling that were used by Europeans who settled the Midwest from the 1600s-1800s.

A long-time cultivator of creative energies within the US timber framing trade, today Rick focuses his energy as a consultant and a subject matter expert, adding to the efficiency, and context of a project by grounding process with practicality and linking community with place.