The multiple lives of wood

Each year about six million trees could be saved simply by reusing the wood and thus avoiding it from being blown or abandoned in landfills.

Once wood was used only once but, nowadays, in accordance with the perspective of sustainable development, to reuse a resource becomes crucial. In this sense, reclaimed wood is increasingly being used in interior design, doors, shelves, furniture, furnishings, beams, planks, siding, flooring, panels, roofs and other structures.

Reclaimed lumber is processed wood retrieved from its original application for purposes of subsequent use. Most reclaimed lumber comes from timbers and decking rescued from old barns, factories and warehouses, although some companies use wood from less traditional structures such as boxcars, coal mines and wine barrels.

Reclaimed lumber has many advantages: the wood's unique appearance, its contribution to green building, the history of the wood's origins, and the wood's physical characteristics such as strength, stability and durability.

• Aesthetically, reclaimed wood offers an aged appearance to a setting.
• Structurally, old reclaimed wood tends to have a much tighter grain structure and is more stable than virgin wood of the same species because it has been exposed to changes in humidity for far longer and is therefore more stable. This fact allows its be used with radiant heating systems.
• From a marketing standpoint, there can be fascinating stories behind the wood worth retelling.
• Environmentally, not only reclaimed wood is a superior green option to wood grown on farms with fertilizer, but virgin or farmed forests are not cut down and wood is diverted from the landfill.

The attention to patterns of ecologically sustainable life and consumption does not come only from companies, but also from the same customers, who are increasingly choosing recovered wood products, result of low environmental impact production criteria.

In line with their attention to environmental issues (environmental certification 14001 and the FSC one for some products, are the proof), Skema has designed a line of products exclusively born from recycled wood, from the axis of the barrel, to the beams of old farms.

The collection is called Open Mind Vertical and currently has an exclusive wall use. At the same time, in collaboration with other companies sensitive to the issue of compatibility, Skema is developing a new conception of furniture and everyday objects that reflect the charm of “years of history."