Tact Inoue unveils Mocky, a new furniture series using heat-pressed artificial wood
Designer Tact Inoue has created the Mocky furniture series, using heat and a 20-ton press to seamlessly join artificial wood components without traditional dowels.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
- Mocky is a furniture series by Tact Inoue that experiments with using heat and pressure to shape artificial wood.
- It utilizes an artificial wood material made of a wood powder and resin composite, modifying traditional joining methods through thermal melting instead of relying on standard joints.
- The manufacturing process uses a 20-ton pressure machine to press components that have been heated with a hot plate or heat gun.
- It stands out with warped joint designs and organic shapes created directly by the material's behavior.
Designer Tact Inoue has created the Mocky furniture collection, which explores the structural and formal potential of artificial wood. Instead of traditional woodworking joinery techniques, this project opts for a process of applying heat and pressure to fuse artificial wood parts together, resulting in natural distortions, bumps, and junctions.
The primary material is artificial wood composed of wood powder mixed with resin, which is typically used for decking. When this material is heated and pressed together, the surfaces bond firmly and increase in strength. Unlike natural wood, which requires dowels or angled grooves, the resin present in the artificial wood allows the material to be reshaped and bonded together through heat and pressure.
The use of artificial wood or synthetic timber in modern design is often viewed merely as a weather-resistant substitute for real wood. However, works like Mocky attempt to shift this perspective by harnessing the unique properties of resin—which softens when exposed to heat—for structural benefits. This is similar to the thermoplastic molding process, which unlocks the rigid geometric limitations found in conventional wooden furniture.
The manufacturing process begins by heating the components using a hot plate or a heat gun. The softened surfaces are then brought together and pressed using a 20-ton pressure machine. This method creates structures and joints that cannot be achieved with conventional natural wood crafting. Rather than mimicking the appearance of real wood, Mocky chooses to deeply explore the specific properties of artificial wood to establish a new approach to furniture design.
The result is furniture with distorted surfaces, irregular joints, and organic curves. This process shifts away from precise joint calculations toward a method closer to molding, relying on physical compression and manual shape adjustments through pressing.
By embracing the imperfections arising from this semi-industrial process, Mocky by Tact Inoue's design studio reflects how heat, pressure, and material behavior can become key drivers in design. Thus, the series presents artificial wood as a distinct material with its own unique identity, rather than just a replacement for standard natural timber.
Source: designboom
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