Wood as a tile — a material swap that changes everything

The Cubes that made COLB known are based on a simple idea: ceramic tiles, mineralised grout, strict geometry. What happens when you keep everything — the form, the grout work, the precision — and swap only the material? This question is occupying us right now. The result is Cubes made from handmade wood tiles.

The basic structure remains identical. The Cube is a Cube: a three-dimensional body built from individual tiles, unified into a whole through mineralised grout. What changes is solely the materiality of the tiles themselves — from fired earth to grown wood. And that one step changes almost everything you feel, see and experience when you stand before such an object.

Why wood tiles — and why now?

Wood in the context of tiles is in itself a contradiction. Tiles are, historically speaking, a material of permanence, of firing, of the unchangeable. Ceramics and stone defy time. Wood, on the other hand, lives: it works, breathes, ages, changes with moisture and light. It has a history you can see and feel.

That is precisely the interest. The Cubes series at COLB is not a decorative exercise, but an investigation of the relationship between form, material and perception. The question of what happens when you force a living, organic material into the strict geometry of a tile — and then compress those tiles into a cubic body — is one that can only be answered through experiment.

A material that breathes, in a form that stands. The wood Cube is not a contradiction — it is a tension that works.

Wood vs. Ceramic: what the material does to the object

The comparison between wood and ceramic tiles is not an aesthetic judgement — it is an analysis of what material does to space, body and experience. Both materials are fully realised in their respective execution. But they speak a completely different language.

	Wood tile	Ceramic tile
Touch	Warm, lightly textured, alive under the hand. The grain is palpable — every tile individual.	Cool, smooth, neutral. Even surface communicating precision and permanence.
Appearance	Depth through grain, colour play through wood type. No two pieces alike.	Homogeneous and controlled. Colour and surface are reproducible, series identity possible.
Spatial effect	Warmth, naturalness, intimacy. The Cube feels inviting, less architecturally monumental.	Cool, architectural, strong. Ceramic Cubes assert the room, make a clear statement.
Temporality	Wood ages visibly — patina, slight colour shifts. The object has a life story.	Ceramic is timeless in the literal sense: unchanging, without patina, without ageing.
Sustainability	Renewable, CO₂-storing, naturally biodegradable — given responsible sourcing.	Energy-intensive to fire, durable without loss of value — lasting, but not renewable.

The grain as composition

What becomes immediately clear when making wood tiles: wood is never neutral. Every tile cut from the same board carries a different pattern. The grain, knot structure, growth rings — they make every element a one-off. This has consequences for the Cube as a whole.

While the ceramic Cube is built from formally identical units — a grid of equals — the wood Cube is a composition of individuals. The challenge lies in organising this individuality so that it produces a coherent whole. It is less tile-laying than image-making: where does the lively grain go? How do grain directions run across corners and edges?

Handcraft production of wood tiles

The grout: the element that remains

What formally defines the Cubes series is not the tile alone — it is the interplay of tile and grout. The mineralised grout is not a necessary evil but a design element. Its width, colour and texture determine how strongly individual elements are set against each other, how legible the grid remains as a grid.

In the wood Cube, this grout creates an interesting play: the living, organic material of the tile meets the mineralised, inorganic, timeless grout. This tension — warm against cool, grown against fired — gives the object its actual energy. It is not a wood object. And it is not a mineral object either. It is both simultaneously.

The grout is the backbone of the Cube — in the wood Cube it becomes a dialogue between what grows and what endures.

Wood as a material between nature and architecture

Wood is the oldest building material in the world. At the same time it is experiencing a strong renaissance in contemporary architecture and design — not as a nostalgic reference, but as a conscious material choice in a debate about sustainability, sensuality and the sensory quality of built environments.

Recent research into the effect of wood surfaces on the human nervous system shows: visible wood in rooms measurably reduces cortisol levels, lowers heart rate, and is consistently perceived by users as warmer, calmer and more inviting than ceramic or concrete surfaces. Wood is physiologically beneficial — not merely aesthetically pleasant.

For an object like the wood Cube, this means: it is not a decorative element that stands in the room and is looked at. It is one that acts on the room — and on the people in it.

Where this experiment leads

The question we started with — what happens when you swap only the materiality? — can be answered more clearly after these first attempts: very much more than the surface changes. The emotional effect changes, the temporal dimension, the tactile experience and the relationship a viewer can build with the object.

The wood Cube is not better than the ceramic Cube. It is different. It speaks to a different part of our perception. And it opens the question of which further materials are translatable into this logic — without the core idea being lost.

The experiment continues. The first objects are taking shape. We will report.