2025
Unique Work Materials: wooden shingles

lukaswegwerth.com and @corinna_dehn

German design duo Lukas Wegwerth and Corinna Dehn’s latest work, Armadillo Hope Chest, is inspired by the partners’ new roles as parents. The work is the latest addition to their ongoing Armadillo series, which consists of sculptural forms wrapped in layers of hand-assembled, locally sourced wooden shingles that formally reference vernacular architecture and animal scales while evoking ideas of protection. Each shingle is individually shaped, sanded, and pigmented prior to placement.

Composed in the couple’s Vogelsberg workshop with their new daughter always close by, Hope Chest symbolizes the designers’ hopes both for their new child and the next generation—as well as their reverence for intergenerational knowledge and sustainable material solutions.

The Armadillo series’ shingles are composed primarily of larch wood, which the pair source in the region and process in a small sawmill there. “To develop a better understanding of sourcing materials for our practice...together with locals, we engage ourselves in the harvesting and processing of wood from forests nearby,” Wegwerth explains. “Vogelsberg is a dormant volcano—nowadays, the region is hilly and rich in forest coverage. The abundance of wood here fostered many applications of the material. Shingles are one application that I became [particularly] interested in,” he says, as historically they were made from local beech wood pieces that were simply too small to be used for furniture making or other building. “They represent the convergence of many ideas in one object—responsible material systems, local resources and productions, and more. I hope the Armadillo series can be read as a playful and positive approach to [investigating] material futures. I’m very interested in exploring its potential.” The work is presented by Gallery FUMI.