Material Innovation in Focus: New Ways with Wood

• The Wood Project from Mexican company Manufactura and design workshop La Metropolitana repurposes waste sawdust from industrial woodwork into sustainable 3D-printed wall partitions. Sawdust from Mexico’s native Tzalam tree provides an earthy red hue, while organic binders prohibit fungal growth, fortifying the material. Assembled from individual sections measuring 20x20cm, the structures are adaptable and scalable. The wood composite has a strength and resilience comparable to fired clay, while 3D printing creates an attractive surface design.

• Decayed and discarded timber is given new life in Japanese designer Daiki Tado’s furniture. Tado scours the coastline of Japan to find driftwood bleached with age, eaten by animals and damaged by waves to upcycle into tables and stools. He uses paint to emphasise the wood’s new textures, applying a layer before cutting away sections to reveal more raw wood that’s picked out in a second colour. The project is a great reminder that seemingly decayed materials can be used to make functional products.

• German designer Basse Stittgen looks beyond the utility of timber as a material, instead exploring lignin – a tree-based polymer extracted from wood pulp in a similar vein to cellulose. However, while cellulose is highly used in manufacturing paper and textiles, lignin has been historically discarded as a waste product. Stittgen combines lignin with cellulose to make polymer clay and bioplastics that can then be formed into products like crockery and furniture. The materials’ dark brown hue and fibrous texture provide the “remade wood” products with an organic wood-like attractive patina.
  
  

For more on wood and wood-based composites, see our Materials Evolutions for the Spring/Summer 2025 and Autumn/Winter 25/26 seasons.