Wood-Skin - flexible wood

Wood is a very present material in our lives. We find it in furniture, flooring, doors, windows, decorative objects. It can be used inside and outside. It has long been, and for many of us it still is, the first choice when it comes to flooring, furniture, homes. But solid wood has its limits. Despite its many uses and beauty, solid wood is rigid, fix. It can be shaped by cutting or heat treatments, but the designers and architects at Wood-Skinin Milan, wanted more. They wanted flexible wood that would give them the chance to create new things, new possibilities.

Wood-Skin came about in 2013, when an enthusiastic and talented team thought they could give wood flexibility by combining it with textiles and advanced computer techniques. The result is a material that looks like a wooden board that can be molded into three-dimensional shapes. The material has huge potential, and can be used for cladding walls and ceilings, making furniture or exterior facades. By shaping flexible wood, shapes can be created that are reminiscent of origami, where instead of paper, wood was used.

The wood used to make the new material is a tackle special. It is cut very precisely into triangles using computer-controlled machines (CNC), which are well known in the wood industry for making very precise cuts. Basically, the cutting instructions are stored in the machine's computer and the machine makes the cuts. Intricate patterns can be produced that can be reproduced identically thousands of times. Plywood allows the use of a very wide range of veneers in a variety of natural designs and colors, so the material is also a great aesthetic gain.

These cuts create a kind of "hinge" that allows the plywood board to bend like origami paper. In this way, a fairly rigid material with limited flexibility such as plywood becomes much more flexible.