NewspaperWood by Vij5 and Mieke Meijer is a unique example of upcyling materials and flipping the resource to product process. Instead of using wood as a source to make paper, NewspaperWood uses the paper to make wood. The design came out of Meijer’s project at the Design Academy Eindhoven.
For a student design project, Meijer took stacks of newspapers, glued them together, and rolled them into a tight ‘log’ that he left to dry, deform and harden. After they ‘cured, ’ these logs could be used as building blocks that could be cut, carved, routed, and used in place of normal wood.
The NewspaperWood has grains and rings similar to a tree. Each slice has a different cross-section of print with its own visual properties. Years later he collaborated with the Dutch design team Vij5, and he began to roll out real products based on these reconstituted pieces of ‘timber.’ Out of this came a series of practical and experimental that use recycled newspapers in new ways that include lamps, jewelry, and other household objects.
For an exhibit in Milan at Salone, Vij5 invited other designers to create products using the NewspaperWood material and the products can be seen on the vij5.nl website.
Image Source:
www.vij5.nl
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