'Wood-Blend Cabinet' Ornamental Round Edge Plywood Cabinet, Schimmel & Schweikle

The ‘Wood-Blend Cabinet’ is a large, functional art piece in the form of a round-edged cabinet that features ornamental detailing created using 3D modelling and printing software.

The dynamic duo Janne Schimmel (Dutch) and Moreno Schweikle (German) met at the renowned Design Academy in Eindhoven (The Netherlands), and they are interested in the use of ornaments as a testimony of the time period in which they were conceived. For this piece, in particular, ornaments play an important role.
The main body of the rounded cabinet is constructed from plywood, a type of wood that is usually used because of its strength and applied for internal construction. Schimmel & Schweikle chose to not cover the construction but leave the plywood visible. Attached to the constructed body are 3D printed ornaments that we made with 3D modelling software. These ornaments reference nature (branch structures and acorns) and historical styles such as baroque ornamentation. Schimmel & Schweikle deliberately used plywood for this cabinet to break with the tradition of using expensive woods for cabinet making. To Schimmel & Schweikle it’s important to investigate each type of wood regardless of their cultural affiliation and the values that are associated with that.
“Because you are not tied to a mould or template every ornament you print can be slightly different from the object that you previously printed. So in a way it is reproducible but more fluent than traditional methods allowing it to react more to the circumstances and become a more fluid medium. With the help of 3D scanning natural elements can be reproduced but also digitally enhanced to fit the need for a certain shape or object.”

Rooted in material theory, Schimmel and Schweikle’s current series of works examines wood and its relationship to human progress, taking a close look at how it’s historical, cultural and political narratives have shaped the way we think of a design for centuries.

Exploring the space between 3D modelling and craft, they invite us to reconsider the hierarchies between the hand made and then digitally manipulated. Simulated wooden ornaments assume a contiguously relational form to the texture they are mimicking, indistinguishable from the original except for the thin lines that give away it's 3d printed manufacturing. Wooden shelving in the shape of a branch, so perfectly tree-like that it replicates itself; the branches organic bulges repeated as if it were a block print. The pieces make you wonder which form would qualify as ‘more real’, an algorithmic search engine might decide on the 3D printed branches, as the articulation of physical properties that are attributed to wood are so perfectly pronounced in this digitally produced form. Baudrillard predicted that the simulation will become more real than the real, yet in the work of Schimmel and Schweikle they remain equals, assisting each other in function and form.

This unique piece was exhibited in Schimmel & Schweikle's solo show 'A tree full of splinters' in the Antwerp based Everyday Gallery.