design Archives - Page 4 of 12

Cozy Australian Beach House Features All Pine Plywood Interiors

Posted on August 3, 2016 by Jeff Easterling

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Continuing the trend of plywood as a minimalist finishing material for interior surfaces, this gorgeous beach house overlooking Bass Strait in Victoria, Australia has a modern rustic feel, with wood grain as its main visual focus. Set along the region’s famed Great Ocean Road, this single-story house by ITN Architects is made to stand up to the harsh coastal conditions while taking in the beautiful scenery from every room. Clad on the outside with silver top ash and rusted steel, the residence really shines once you step inside to take in all that lovely pine ply.

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A spine shelving wall runs the entire length of the house, not only providing lots of space for books and objects but also framing art and photography. Strategically placed doors on some areas of the shelving offer a way to hide clutter, so the residents can show off their most display-worthy belongings. The unfinished plywood continues as the sole wall finish through the hallways and into the bedrooms, creating a cohesive flow to the space.

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All that plywood is complemented by more and more wood in similar tones, including the wide-plank flooring, exposed ceiling beams and a simple farmhouse dining table. Other than the furniture, all there is to break up the expanses of wood surfaces are floor-to-ceiling glass walls taking in the dramatic scenery.

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Home to both a writer and a surfer as well as their three adult children, this home is both a casual beach house in an updated modern style and a refuge from the elements year-round, with the living room elevated on stilts to gaze out over the treetops.

Wooden Wonders: You’ve Never Seen a Staircase Quite Like This

Posted on June 16, 2016 by Jeff Easterling

This shockingly beautiful staircase stands as a sculptural centerpiece within the Atrium office tower in Tel Aviv, Israel, with spiraling steps leading up to a tornado-shaped deck. Designed by architect Oded Halaf and built by Tomer Gelfand, the structure is not just a work of art in its unusual shape, it’s an example of how high-tech design and traditional woodworking can come together for modern usage.

29,527 feet of raw poplar were cut using a CNC machine to form a series of arches, which were assembled on-site into the final shape. Navigating it isn’t meant to be as simple as taking a functional set of stairs to get from one level of a building to the next; it’s an experience in itself, taking in the whole structure from a new angle with every step.

The firm Tomer Gelfland uses advanced design and simulation software to create digital models that calculate exactly how much wood is needed, and the precise angles at which it will need to be cut and assembled. This information is fed to the CNC machine to make the cuts, but the wood is finished by hand. You can view the construction and assembly process at the firm’s website.

This gorgeous project is just a peek into the future of wood as a sustainable, durable and incredibly versatile material that will be increasingly utilized in ultramodern settings.

Toyota Unveils Wooden Car Made Using Traditional Japanese Joinery

Posted on April 30, 2016 by Jeff Easterling

The strength and durability of traditional Japanese joinery techniques are put to the test with Toyota’s ‘Setsuna,’ a vehicle made almost entirely from wood. No nails, screws or glue were needed to assemble the thousands of wooden parts that went into the creation of this prototype thanks to ‘okuriari’ and ‘kusabi,’ also known as housed dovetail joints and fox-wedged mortise and tenon joints.

Designed to be a family heirloom, the Setsuna proves that cars don’t have to be technologically advanced to be modern-day marvels. Gadgets come second to the beauty of the wood in this ten-foot-long two seater, which has 86 body panels made from Japanese cedar. These panels can be fitted and removed without fasteners, so the dovetailing and mortise joints can be maintained over time if they wear down.

In fact, if properly maintained, the car could last over one hundred years, says Toyota. “When we created the Setsuna, we envisaged a family pouring its love into it over generations so that the car gains an irreplaceable value. Continuous development is possible in the form of bonds between the car and the family, like the growth rings of a tree. To proceed with the development of a car utilizing the appeal of wood, we directly spoke with experts with wide-ranging knowledge, including carpenters specializing in temple and shrine construction and ship’s carpenters.”

It’s unclear just how this wood construction would hold up in an accident, and it’s probably not exactly street legal, but it sure is beautiful.

Twisted Wood Sculptures Celebrate the Personality of Pine

Posted on March 29, 2016 by Jeff Easterling

Simultaneously strong and easy to carve, pine offers some of the most versatile characteristics in the world of wood, and this series of incredible sculptures puts that fact to a visual test. Brussels-based artist Xavier Puente Vilardell uses mostly manual tools to manipulate pine trunks into surreal sculptures highlighting the pliability of the material, almost as if you could twist it into a new shape with your bare hands.

Vilardell allows the natural contours of the wood to provide inspiration, guiding him in how each trunk should be cut and shaped. Spirals and corkscrews follow the pattern of tree ring growth, knots become highlights and smaller branches turn into protrusions of various shapes.

The artist seems to take particular pleasure in the visceral aspects of carving with pine, enjoying its “strong and penetrating odor that takes root in the land.”

“Working with wood requires a deep respect for the living, it must understand its inner nature and characteristics that give a certain personality.” Villardell likens the process to a writer creating a character with their own life, flaws and virtues, experiences, nuances and peculiarities.

Timber Tech: Even Gadgets Can Be Made of Wood!

Posted on March 3, 2016 by Jeff Easterling

Who says gadgets have to be made from throwaway, environmentally unfriendly plastics? Just as with furniture, decor, household items and even architecture, they’ll last longer – and look a lot more beautiful – when they’re hand-crafted from high quality wood. Timber tech might seem like a gimmick upon first glance, but it’s actually a step in a more sustainable direction, and these gorgeous items are just as functional as their more conventional counterparts.

Take for example this multitouch trackpad and numerical keyboard, each constructed from a single piece of wood. Compatible with any Mac OS, Windows 7 or 8 computer, these items connect wirelessly via Bluetooth and are available at the Design Boom store.

The wooden Tok Tok ‘Trobla’ speaker consists of a system of detachable wooden pieces designed to fit different generations of iPhones and other smartphones. You simply insert your phone in the top, and the sound is amplified through a special chamber that enhances the stereophony and low frequencies.

Maybe you can’t actually push any of the buttons or adjust the other ‘controls’ laser-engraved onto this fun wooden boombox, but you don’t need to – you control it through your phone or computer. Connect via Bluetooth or 3.5mm audio input to project sound through two 3-inch full-range speakers.

Wood Innovations: Beautiful Uses for Textile-Like Timber Skin

Posted on March 1, 2016 by Jeff Easterling

What would you create with a flexible wooden material that can be wrapped around objects or manipulated into shape like a piece of fabric? The faceted panels of ‘wood skin,’ a composite material that’s redefining the possibilities of wood, enable it to bend and fold in extraordinary ways. Applied to a textile backing, the geometric pieces of wood in various shapes and sizes hinge at desired points for virtually limitless applications.

Created by a design team in Milan using specially-created software, the revolutionary material creates a high-end modern aesthetic, whether it’s applied to surfaces or bunched up into sculptural ceiling installations or freestanding structures. The design enables vertical and horizontal 3D surfaces, volumes and panels.

The multi-toned walls at Dubai’s Reign Restaurant are particularly stunning, showing the material in action as partition walls, curtains and cladding. There’s also an acoustic version called ‘sound-skin’, shown here at the On-House Home Theatre in Milan.

Want to play around with it yourself? You can order sample packs at the Wood Skin website.