With consultation from the celebrated German "organic architect" Otto Frei, Makepeace commissioned the architect Richard Burton of ABK to build the first "Prototype House", at a cost of pounds 50,000. This was followed by the Training Centre, a dramatic arched structure clad in a polymer fabric which houses the workshops for developing new products out of thinnings. Thinnings represent half the annual forest crop yet have little commercial value, being sold for firewood or pulp.Makepeace's vision has been to gather together a team of foresters, biologists, engineers and architects to establish a woodland design, research and development centre to find new uses for these forest thinnings. Hooke Park is altogether more ambitious: industrial in scale and global in its vision. For here in the middle of the forest are the extraordinary beginnings of a new ecology, possibly a new rural economy, represented by a surreal scattering of futuristic organic buildings made from "thinnings"; ie, trees that are uprooted in order to allow those around them to grow to best advantage. He makes it very clear, however, that while there might be common ground in the message there is none in the medium: "In design you are looking to direct what is happening - driftwood furniture is more haphazard."But Makepeace's environmental awareness goes far beyond making statements through chairs.

Its ultimate expression lies four miles away from Parnham, at Hooke Park, a 330-acre stretch of forest that he bought from the Forestry Commission in 1983. Parnham, tucked away like a mediaeval retreat with its own small community of live-in students and craftsmen, has a slightly retrogressive air and - for all Makepeace's talk of scholarships and penniless students - it is difficult to shake off elitist associations. This may be the most "fashionable" stuff that Makepeace has done, when you consider the current vogue for driftwood furniture. This has a base of scorched burr oak from which branch laminated oak legs supporting a top of burr oak and holly; Myerson describes it as "an eloquent statement about the capacity of nature to renew itself despite Man's abuse of the earth's resources". He has felt for some time that design had "become impoverished by this overbearing sense that if it wasn't an industrial aesthetic it wasn't modern" He himself looks to nature for inspiration.

"Nature and people have a symbiotic relationship which needs to be reflected in design."It would be easy to knock Makepeace for his environmental message if it was only conveyed through the imagery of his furniture: the Creation Collection, with its rather literal interpretations of shells, feathers and leaves, as well as more narrative pieces, like the Phoenix table. He believes, however, that people have been conditioned to enjoy the "machine aesthetic" because that is all that is available with present technology. But as technology progresses, he predicts that even mass-produced furniture will become more "complex and expressive". "There are always lots of photo-graphs of the work which people will see. No, owning something fine is not necessarily elitist."Makepeace is well aware that what he calls the "richness" of his furniture (and what his detractors call its "vulgarity") does not necessarily sit well with the times. "Own-ing something is not the only way of enjoying it," he declares, a judgement that is perhaps easy to make when you're essentially a non-materialist surrounded by possessions, and every bit as annoying as rich people who tell you money isn't everything. (As one fellow craftsman puts it: "The good thing about Makepeace is that he puts such a high price on his work that it pushes the market up for everybody else.") Makepeace is unapologetic: "My studio is making furniture for people who are clearly able to afford the best; it is uncompromising in quality and inevitably expensive." But he does not see this as being elitist.