Between trunks, roots, rudimentary tools, everyday furniture and high-tech pieces, the new exhibition at the Barcelona Design Museum is articulated, Let's touch wood! Design, wood and sustainability, curated by Pilar Vélez, former director of the museum, and Martí Boada, environmental scientist and geographer. The museum opens the doors of the exhibition this Wednesday and it will last until January 22.
"Our intention is that people become more informed about the climate emergency and how design can be a revolutionary discipline to help curb the effects of human pollution", explained Boada at the presentation of the exhibition.
Thus, the tour is structured around three axes: the tree as an inspiring element of the circular bioeconomy, wood as an element of design and sustainability and, finally, the bioeconomy and sustainability as the indisputable paths that design must take to face the climate crisis.
In this way, you can see different objects and designs from the Paleolithic to the present. Among them, bark that served as trays, examples of the first domestic utensils, 300,000-year-old spears from Schöningen (Germany) to wheels built with different woods, a harpsichord, ship structures and even designs for rockets, the most toe cap to withstand high temperatures in space travel. And all made of wood.
But the installation that stands out most among the future uses of wood is the Mediterranean Habitat Module, an architectural design project coordinated by Salvador Ordóñez, which presents a house made exclusively of wood, cork and straw.
Ordóñez points out that the most encouraging aspect of this project is that "all the materials used are reproducible", that is, it does not encourage the exploitation of forests, but rather responsible use and long life expectancy.
This is how the exhibition Touch Wood! Design, wood and sustainability at the Barcelona Design Museum, after a three-year process of research and documentation. "The most interesting thing is that thanks to exhaustive research, today we can present unpublished objects and designs", Pilar Vélez underlined.
This initiative is included in the program of the annual conference of the European Forest Institute, which has designated Barcelona European Forest City 2022. Thus, the message that the exhibition intends to convey to the public is not climate apocalyptic alarmism, but to offer more powers of analysis of the crisis and, above all, understanding that the planet does not belong to humans and that we have to do everything possible to conserve it and design can be a reference area to achieve this.
