Wood-Design, an initiative of Flanders Circular and Wood Info Bois, brings together five woodworking companies and five designers. Together they are now working out an inspiring and intriguing project in which they can set an example for the entire sector. In this collaboration they have to revalue as much waste wood as possible and optimize production processes. In the meantime, the five companies and five designers have found each other, and many Limburg designers appear to be cut out of the good wood.

By means of an open call, Wood-Design was able to collect no less than 64 qualitative entries that a jury could use. In addition to members of the organising partner organisations, there were also representatives of BOS+ and Flanders DC. They selected Studio Plastique, by designers Archibald Godts and Theresa Bastek, who recently received the Henry van de Velde Young Talent Gold Award.

Rayah Wauters, who has a long-standing love of wood with NAUWAU, is also invited to collaborate in Wood-Design. “Working together with nature instead of exploiting it is a vision grafted onto my creative thinking. Wood-Design gives me the opportunity to convince the masses of this point of view and provide them with new insights into making the wood sector more sustainable”, she says.

Another trusted Wanderful.designer in the list of collaborations is Frederik Delbart. “Sustainability in concept, design, use of materials, execution, logistics… is extremely important”, says the creative director and strategic consultant for various Belgian companies. “To be able to work on this with Belgian companies is an important step in the right direction”.

The other designers are Giel Dedeurwaerder and Brent Neve who present themselves as a collective and Ellen Comhaire who graduated in 2019 with a design grafted on fungi (mycelium) on residual flows from agriculture. At the participating companies we notice Cohout. This forest operator and round timber trader from Nieuwerkerken specialises in European hardwood, mainly poplar, oak, beech and ash.