According to the grain


This project highlights the quality of wood grain, which character is often neutralized in industrial processing. By chiseling down 12mm from a flat surface and chiseling out the knots, its three-dimensionality and texture are brought out and its unique materiality becomes palpable to the casual viewer. The surface can now reveal more secret and help the user imagine what this material once looked like in its natural state. By sitting, you can feel, experience and appreciate the material.

A furniture factory and machines in a furniture factory are basically designed to make a flat surface. Underneath the surface, there are hidden secrets of materials related to their origin. By actually revealing a surface, I can show that the grain pattern is not just a graphical pattern but a part of a structure. The structure is originally designed for a tree itself not for us. and we are just borrowing their structure for our daily purpose. So I cannot control everything and I need to follow their nature. I cannot make an exact same bench. it is a session between maker and material. I believe through touching the surface you can start to think about the material and start to understand their structures and origins usually hidden underneath a flat surface. We tend to think we almost understand objects just by watching them through screens. That is exactly the wall which I want to break by this project. This project is aimed to question an industrial surface and process and in order to appreciate an object and its material more.














  © 2023   Sho Ota