The boldly shaped branch with its smooth, almost viscous texture was 3D scanned, and the cross-sectional angle for installation was digitally examined in order to function as a wall hook. The form is constructed to appear as though the branch is naturally growing out of the wall.
A branch that would ordinarily exist as a single, unique entity in nature is instead mass-produced like an industrial product, offered in various wood species and finishes. This condition carries a certain sense of strangeness, softly blurring the boundary between nature and industry.
　
　
-Industrial Branch-
In the process of creating the original material ForestBank, I have collected branches from various places. Before they can be used as material, the branches must first be cut into small pieces. Over time, I have processed countless branches, and among them there were some whose unusual forms or distinctive textures caught my attention. Instead of using these branches as material for ForestBank, I quietly set them aside and collected them without any particular purpose.
At first glance, they are nothing more than ordinary branches with no apparent value. Yet they hold the potential to become fragments of ideas or the starting point of new creations. For me, they possess a kind of value that cannot easily be explained. It is similar to the feeling of picking up a small stone or shell by the sea or along a riverbank—something people instinctively take home without any clear reason.
In this project, I wondered whether these branches, which had remained without a purpose, could be given a function and elevated into product design. Each branch is 3D-scanned and converted into modeling data. With the support of Karimoku Furniture, the form of the branch is then carved from wood using a CNC machine. In this process, the natural object is first translated into data and then re-emerges as material. What occurs here is a back-and-forth movement between data and matter.
Using the manufacturing technologies that Karimoku employs to mass-produce furniture, the project attempts to mass-produce “branches.” In doing so, it unsettles the boundary between original and reproduction. Moving between craft and industry, a natural branch is transformed into an industrial product. It is a paradox: creating a “branch” from “wood.” Through this inversion, the project quietly reverses the relationship between nature and industry.