When a powerful storm ran through the Dutch city of Eindhoven last year, nearly 1,000 trees fell victim to heavy winds and found themselves uprooted from the ground. Typically those felled trees would be thrown into a wood chipper and disposed of, but a Dutch design studio thought of a clever way to reuse the trees by turning them into awesome wooden benches.
To do this, the studio cut the tree trunks in half lengthways, then sliced these again to make long planks. The resulting timber lengths were stacked, with wooden pegs creating a small space between them to allow the wood to dry out. At the end of each bench, a unique number is printed that identifies where it used to stand in the city.
Visitors to the Wildhout website can type in this number to learn more about the particular tree, as well as to access an interactive map that shows what has happened to other trees that came down in the storm.
