PROJECT 377

"FROM WOOD WASTE TO SLEEK PANELS: AN EXPERIMENTAL PAVILION FOR GRUPPO SAVIOLA"

Carlo Ratti Associati

CRA and Italo Rota transform four tons of discarded wooden objects into a circularity-themed pavilion for Gruppo Saviola, a world-leading producer of wooden panels made from 100% recycled timber. The project called Wood You Believe? will be presented at the Milan Design Week 2023, showcasing how furniture waste can become bespoke materials for interior spaces.

International design and innovation office CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and architect Italo Rota have developed an installation for Gruppo Saviola, a leading producer of fully recycled wooden panels which participates in the Milan Design Week for the first time. Titled Wood You Believe?, the pavilion is composed of several tons of discarded wooden furniture which progressively transform into sleek panels – showing the full process of wood waste reuse. Inside, the panels highlight the potential of digital printing to create new finishes. The project will be exhibited at Fiera Milano (Pavilion 10, C04) between April 18 and 23, 2023.

Gruppo Saviola was ahead of its time when it started producing ecological panels from recycled wood in the 1990s. Its decades-long endeavor culminates in the installation at Salone del Mobile 2023 that imagines future scenarios in interior design.  

Wood You Believe? is a cubical structure in which each facade features a set of modular claddings made of scrapped wooden desks, chairs, pallets, fruit crates, and other wooden objects. Recreating what one would see in a wood recycling facility, the objects previously made redundant are turned into a high-quality final product in interior design according to the principles of the Circular Economy.

The interior space of the pavilion accentuates Saviola’s use of advanced fabrication technologies in the production of customized panels. Passing through the portal, visitors are transported into an immersive space constructed out of more than one hundred panels highlighting the brand’s trademarked “pannello ecologico” technology. Made of fully recycled wood, the panels are digitally treated to display a wide range of textured finishes that complement different design typologies. Using artificial intelligence tools, CRA and Rota generated an abstract landscape that highlights the product’s design potential.

Wood You Believe? is built by CRA Make, the design and construction unit of CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati. The studio has contributed to various projects centered on the reduction and recycling of waste materials. These include Feel the Peel, developed for energy company Eni in 2019, which made 3D-printed compostable cups out of orange peel. For the Italian Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai, co-designed by CRA and Italo Rota with Matteo Gatto and F&M Ingegneria, the team created a facade of ropes made from two million recycled plastic bottles. In addition, CRA is also building the Mutti Canteen for the eponymous tomato brand, composed in part of damaged tomatoes discarded in the canning process.

CREDITS

Wood You Believe?

A project by CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and Italo Rota for Gruppo Saviola

CRA team: Carlo Ratti, Jelena Krco, Gary di Silvio, Pasquale Milieri, Gianluca Zimbardi

CRA Make team: Mykola Murashko (CTO), Sara Zampieron, Marco Guarany, Mohamed Yasser Hariss

Graphic design: Studio FM Milano

Location: C04, Pavilion 10, Salone del Mobile, Fiera Milano

Date: 18-23 April 2023

 ABOUT GRUPPO SAVIOLA

Gruppo Saviola is the Eco-Ethical Company, founded by Mauro Saviola in 1963, with headquarters in Viadana (Mantua), Italy. It was the first company in the world to design and manufacture the 100% recycled-wood ecological panel, a panel created only with waste wood (post-consumer), recovered from collection centers and landfill. The Group is composed by four Business Units: Saviola, Sadepan, Composad and Saviolife. The first Business Unit is Saviola that includes both the aspects related to the collection of post-consumer wood (Ecolegno network), and the production of ecological panel 100% recycled wood. The ecological panel represents an excellence on the market: it serves the supply chain of wood furniture and can meet objectives of sustainability, Italian style, design thanks to product research. Gruppo Saviola has 2000 employees, 15 plants in Italy and abroad and a collection network of post-consumer wood in Europe of 26 Ecolegno centres.

 ABOUT CRA-CARLO RATTI ASSOCIATI

CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati is an international design and innovation practice based in Turin, Italy, and New York City. Drawing on Carlo Ratti’s research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the office is currently involved in many projects across the globe, embracing every scale of intervention – from furniture to urban planning. Among recent projects are the Italian Pavilion at Expo Dubai 2020, biophilic skyscraper CapitaSpring in Singapore, the urban curatorship of Manifesta 14 Prishtina biennial, the redesign of the Agnelli Foundation HQ in Turin, and the master plan for Milan Innovation District (MIND). CRA is the only design firm whose works have been featured three times in TIME Magazine’s “Best Inventions of the Year” list – respectively with the Digital Water Pavilion, the Copenhagen Wheel, and Scribit. In the last years, the office has been involved in the launch of Makr Shakr, a startup producing the world’s first robotic bar system, and Scribit, the write&erase robot.

ABOUT ITALO ROTA BUILDING OFFICE

Italo Rota Building Office is an international architectural office founded by Italo Rota and based in Milano, Italy. With over thirty years of constant and advanced multidisciplinary research, IRBO develops innovative projects where humanistic beauty and sustainability are integrated in fields that extend to contemporary art and robotics. Aiming at the priority of achieving new living systems for the city of the “extreme present”, IRBO applies the most advanced technologies collaborating with labs, design firms and international universities. The office counts on the balance between art and science in its design research, creating a poetic manifestation that sustains the creation of projects with a new notion of beauty, a notion that according to Gardner “is the capacity of generating interest by a memorable form and an attitude of evoking further explorations.”