Dutch designer Arno Hoogland has developed a way for reworking MDF panels into partitions and furnishings with hypnotic 3D textures.
In a solo exhibition for Milan design week, Hoogland confirmed how he makes use of a robotic to carve intricate patterns into the floor of MDF, the engineered wooden also called medium-density fibreboard.
The present, titled Deus Ex Machina, noticed the Amsterdam-based designer assemble a “temple of the longer term” out of those digitally crafted panels.
Hoogland additionally offered chairs, tables and tiles created from the fabric, together with some with a silver metallic end.
“It is a tribute to MDF,” Hoogland instructed Dezeen throughout a tour of the present.
“MDF shouldn’t be essentially the most elegant materials – nobody is happy with utilizing it. However I wished to point out that MDF might be stunning.”
Hoogland developed the method after discovering a software program program that would flip his 2D drawings into 3D textures. He makes use of this to program his CNC milling machine, which carves the textures into the MDF panels.
The CNC robotic was in operation all through Milan design week, permitting Hoogland to step by step construct up the partitions of his MDF temple.
Among the textures had a geometrical logic, fashioned of organised strains and repeating patterns. Others have been extra like graphic artworks, with summary kinds and overlapping motifs.
The designer hoped to point out a unique aspect to a fabric usually seen as low-cost and ugly.
Having educated as a carpenter earlier than turning into a designer, he wished to be proud fairly than ashamed of utilizing MDF.
“I by no means used to point out the machine and, when folks requested me what the fabric was, I’d say pressed wooden. I by no means mentioned the phrase MDF,” he mentioned.
“This exhibition is me popping out of the closet,” he continued.
“I wished to point out everybody what we are able to do with this materials. It might take a very long time to do all this by hand with a chisel, however we make it straightforward.”
MDF is made by urgent a combination of waste wooden fibres and glue at a excessive temperature. Some MDFs are extra eco-friendly than others, relying on the selection of binding agent.
Hoogland used an MDF made with plant-based glue, billed as “the world’s first biobased MDF”. Offered by materials provider Blok Plaatmateriaal, it’s the Fibralux Biobased from Belgian producer Unilin.
“That is the MDF future,” Hoogland mentioned.
Deus Ex Machina fashioned a part of the Isola Design District, a subsection of Milan design week that spotlights younger and rising designers and studios.
The exhibition title is a Latin time period that interprets as “god from the machine”. To bolster the thought of the robotic as a creator of recent worlds, Hoogland put it below a highlight in the course of the exhibition.
His robotically carved MDF chairs and tables have been displayed across the temple, surrounded by piles of sawdust created from the carving course of.
These included the silver objects, which have been created by including a chrome end to the carved MDF.
The exhibition partitions have been coated in tiles, which have been supplied on sale to guests. Each piece offered was accompanied by a letter claiming to be written by the MDF itself.
It learn: “Many say I drifted too removed from my picket roots and hate me for my dusty popularity. However I’m very loveable. Embrace the mud. For we’re all mud, and to mud we will return.”
Studio images is by Bram Spaan.
Deus Ex Machina was on present from 7 to 13 April 2025 as a part of Milan design week. See Dezeen Occasions Information for an up-to-date record of structure and design occasions happening all over the world.
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