Arboreus
Ash, american walnut
A Bench/Dog's bed/Installation for a private house in Rome, Italy.
Made out of Bendywood Ash, and solid American Walnut, It resembles branches or roots, giving the entrance of this beautiful house a very special and unique touch.
The story
Arboreus has been one of the most challenging works for Rota-Lab
Our clients asked us to design a bench for the entrance of their house inspired by nature, which in it's shape should have also a place for the dog's bed. I started sketching some ideas which they really liked, but our great dilemma was about how to transform the drawings into the real phisical thing.
We started searching for solutions until we discovered Bendywood which is solid wood that, with a particular process, bends much better then normal solid wood.
First sketches of Arboreus
We bought a train ticket and went to Bressanone, home of the Bendywood factory, to talk to the people that produce this special wood and deeply understand how to use it.
We came back full of enthusiasm with some samples of wood and started figuring out how to proceed.
After building a steambox, we began our attempts. We put up a structure that resembled the shape of what we had to build so that we could use it as a template that would hold the Bendywood strips in place where we needed them.
It took about a month to really figure out the right way to get all this done. We failed and failed attempts, untill we understood that there was one and only way to build this bench as we wanted it.
From then on, we didn't stop untill it was finished.
Throughout all the process we've been filming and documenting our work. This is a short video that shows how we proceeded, and the final result.