Spring Wood Restless Legs

Carolien Laro is a furniture designer who experiments with the inherent properties of wood to create new pathways for innovation in furniture. A graduate of the Wood and Furniture College in Amsterdam, Laro prefers mechanical intervention rather than chemical to unlock the finest qualities of wood.

In that regard, her Spring Wood series takes the flexibility of a live tree as inspiration and seeks to recreate it. Wood used in furniture manufacture is prized for its hardness, stability and rigidity. But human comfort often demands flexibility; therefore Laro found a way to mill and saw wood to give it an almost trampoline-like bounce by cutting alternating parallel rifts into the wood. The wheels in her Restless Legs stool are placed transversely, causing the legs to move outward when someone sits down. The wood, resilient to breakage, creates the comfort a seat requires without cushions or chemicals.