3D-printing furniture is fine and all. Until the day they figure out a way to melt wood, extrude it from a nozzle, and harden it again, though, it remains far from a satisfying solution. If you want a way to quickly fabricate wooden items, we doubt there’s anything more efficient than Wood-Skin.
First introduced three years ago, Wood-Skin creates sheets of wood that can bend into any polygonal shape. That’s right, it’s malleable wood. Well, it’s not exactly pure wood. Instead, it’s a composite material consisting of two layers of wood that sandwiches a layer of strong yet flexible synthetic textile.
Wood-Skin’s wooden layers aren’t simple flat slabs, either. Instead, they are milled with repeating geometric patterns that create creases to allow certain sections of the wood to easily fold, all while retaining the wood’s strength. To build a piece of furniture, you simply take a sheet, fold it to create the furniture’s shape, and you’re done, facilitating a fabrication process that’s simpler than anything before it.
Clients can buy sheets of Wood-Skin in two standard sizes (2,500 x 1,250 mm and 3,050 x 1,525 mm) using birch plywood in their choice of thickness (from 4 mm up to 30 mm). Types and sizes of patterns can be specified, too (standard are triangular 50, 100, and 150 mm, although they’ll accept other requests), as well as mixed patterns for those who have a clear idea of the kind of furniture they’re building. The team is also developing a 3D modeling software, which will let you design a piece of furniture, then suggest the exact configuration of Wood-Skin sheet that you will need to build it.
Pricing for Wood-Skin starts at €230 per square meter.