Layer by Layer: Building wood from waste

Hyper Wood 

Teodoro's Hyper Wood project represents a fascinating convergence of biomimicry and circular economy principles, creating a biomaterial that honours timber's essential qualities without requiring a single tree.

This innovation tackles a critical resource tension facing our world today. Global wood demand continues climbing while forest regeneration simply cannot match consumption rates. Traditional forestry practices extract from living ecosystems, contributing to deforestation and biodiversity loss. Teodoro's method offers a fundamentally different approach: diverting waste streams rather than depleting natural forests, transforming disposal challenges into creative opportunities.

The innovation begins with understanding wood's foundational structure at the molecular level. Hemp yarn forms the initial scaffold, carefully mimicking the fibrous framework that gives natural timber its remarkable strength and flexibility. This organic matrix is then repeatedly immersed in bio-composite solutions derived from fermented organic waste, primarily starchy food byproducts that undergo natural breakdown processes, transforming into complex polymeric chains.

Each immersion cycle deposits a new layer of material, gradually building what becomes remarkably similar to wood's characteristic growth rings. This compressed manufacturing process mirrors decades of natural photosynthesis and cellulose formation, but accomplishes it in a fraction of the time.

The resulting Hyper Wood exhibits all of timber's essential qualities: authentic tactile properties, natural visual aesthetics, and complete workability with standard tools. What makes this approach particularly compelling is its embrace of natural variation rather than industrial standardisation. Hemp fibres create unique grain patterns in each batch, while differently aged food waste components develop distinct colours and textures during fermentation. Rather than controlling this variability through chemical processing, Teodoro celebrates these differences as aesthetic features, ensuring each piece carries its visual narrative and character.

Teodoro's Hyper Wood captures the essence of biomimicry: applying nature’s evolved solutions to today’s challenges. By replicating how trees build strength through layered growth, using waste materials, this project shows how ecological insight can drive truly sustainable innovation.

Nature protects through layers, like trees building bark or our skin forming its barrier. Our Eco Marine Cream follows the same principle. Instead of disrupting the skin, it supports and mimics its natural structure, strengthening it from within.

Just as Hyper Wood reimagines tree anatomy with hemp, our cream draws on biomimetic principles to nourish and protect the skin. Both innovations show that by learning from nature, we can create better, regenerative solutions.

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References: Teodoro Rava