Too Good To Waste
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An interactive installation, designed by Benedetta Tagliabue – EMBT, crafted by furniture makers Benchmark and initiated by the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), originally created for Milan Design Week this autumn was also represented at the Hay Festival Segovia 2017. Using in the project such tree species as American oak, maple, cherry and tulipwood, the authors seek to question the validity of the current relationship between wood consumption and fashion.
Contrary to popular perception, not all forests are disappearing. In fact, the vast American hardwood forest is a quickly expanding resource and the volume of its standing timber has more than doubled in the last 50 years. However, due to fashion and color trends, demand is too often focused on just a few species, while many others are underused or left in the forest, which is a lost opportunity for design and carbon storage.
Too Good to Waste is an invitation to reflect on the responsible use of these forests and to discover species and grades of American hardwoods rarely found in homes or furniture stores in Europe, but that need to be considered if people want to contribute to a balanced and sustainable use of the forest. This project is not only a celebration of all the variety of species and grades of hardwood that the forest naturally produces and regenerates, but also an invitation to discover the piece in the most literal sense: users are encouraged to touch and inhabit this piece, to interact and play with it, opening its different components by pushing, pulling, swiveling and discovering new configurations. Too Good to Waste reimagines the historic architecture of the Cortile d’Onore (the courtyard from the Renaissance period by the famous architect Filarete where the piece is located), which features many decorative elements and human figures coming out of the walls. Benedetta Tagliabue explains: “We wanted to re-create this concept in a playful and modern way by creating a wall full of surprises, where the people who inhabit the wall will be real. We hope that visitors, surprised by this installation, will want to interact with it, and that they will discover and use the pieces of furniture it hides: seats, tables, mirrors… We hope that their curiosity will make this piece very animated.”
Miralles Tagliabue EMBT