A word from Emmanuel Champenois, co-founder of the agency Design Day

As a specialist in interior design, what is your take on wood?

The very essence of wood is a warm, natural material for interior decorating, with its inherent authenticity. With Internet and commercial websites placing a greater distance between consumer and vendor, wood retains that spark of humanity that we seek to achieve in sales outlets. As a healthful, naturalmaterial blending perfectly into the environment, it is a benchmarkfor human relations. As such, we prefer to use it for its comforting effect in areas where sales staff or consultants discuss projects with customers.

With the ever-developingeco-design approach, does wood match up to the requirements set forth in the specifications for tenders you bid on? What hinders your use of this material?

Wood is intrinsically an eco-friendly material, yet ultimately this is not necessarily the case. Take floorboards for instance: they are nailed and varnished, meaning that they are complicated, if not downright impossible, to recycle. At the same time, the timber industry is up against tough competition. PVC engineers, for example, have come up with100% recyclablesystems without COV. In terms of design, PVC and tile manufacturers have put in huge efforts and have now achieved a broad palette of available effects. Plus which, solutions are increasingly easy to install. Lastly, wood is often the least cost-effective of materials.

Luckily, in developed countries, wood is imbued with traditional, tangible values. Nevertheless, in the developing world, wood has been cast aside in favour of materials that are deemed more modern such as glassand metal, PVC and tiling.

Another interesting example opens up improvementpossibilities: in the developing world, we are working withlocal producers and processorswho demonstrate savoir-faire and an incredible level of ingenuityto leverage the techniques and aesthetic advantagesof wood. With the design of original shapes and the use of stunning varnishes, we have obtained an amazingblendof authenticity and modern flavour.
 

How are you going to put this analysis across at Expobois 2012?

When I am given the floor at theForum Innovation I hopeto alert the timber industry to the factors limiting our ability to impose wood in our interior decorationprojects given the requirements of eco-design and cost-effectiveness. Design studios and players in the timber industry need to talk together, since I am convinced that we can do a lot together.

I shall be providing some concrete examples of interior decoration in France to show that synergy is possible, to come up with reliable solutions in both economic and environmental terms.