N4 Folding Screen in Bleached Oak

All of my designs are the product of trial-and-error experimentation in the studio, where I work from sketches, scaled plaster models, and mock-ups. I’m interested in furniture and lighting whose forms suggest movement, dynamism and instability. In the N-series for example, a body of work dating from 2010, I treat wood as a plastic medium capable of expressing curvature along any axis. All of the pieces in the N-series are rotationally symmetrical, which gives the organic forms a geometrical logic that can only be grasped by circumambulating the pieces. Since the early 2000s I’ve worked almost exclusively with stacked-laminate construction – a technique that relies on the careful laying-out of alternating grain patterns on parallel pieces of wood, overlapped in successive layers. The process is both additive and subtractive: in the first stage the rough form is built by stacking glued-up layers, each corresponding to a given point on the x, y or z axes. These layers, laminated together in a stair-like or topographical form, are then sculpted with handheld power tools to obtain the final, smooth surface. If engineered properly the stacked-laminate method can achieve outstanding strength and stability. With each successive piece I’ve attempted to push the boundaries of the medium of wood and of my own imagination, posing and re-posing the question to myself: Which parts of the volume are essential and which can be removed? Aaron Scott Design is based in Dumbo, Brookyn