After a few minutes of visiting Woodoo, near Troyes, in Aube, a question torments us: where wood is it stored? The company, contraction of the English words “wood” and “voodoo”, respectively wood and voodoo in French, obviously has no pile of logs, not even branches. An employee of the start-up, Guillaume, quickly reassures us by pointing to a corner of the warehouse. He is there! Not as we imagined, but piled up in thin sheets of about 0.5 millimeters on a few shelves. The solved mystery immediately generates another one: what do we do with this wood which cracks in hand more easily than a rusk?
Guillaume grabs a sheet and places it in a Teflon mould. A strong smell begins to emerge: it comes from a resin vegetating in a nearby cylinder. The young man then goes to the oven. After “drawing the air” from the wood, he patiently injects the viscous liquid into the micro-cavities and heats everything up like a simple toasted sandwich. A few minutes later, the new sheet is ready. As if boosted with steroids, it is a little thicker, less flammable, seems more resistant overall and has another property: translucency.
“The possibilities are limitless”
The start-up, which keeps the recipe for its resin more secret than that of Coca-Cola, has called this “augmented” wood the “slim” (end, in French). Translucent, thin and solid, the material has seduced luxury brands for several years as an alternative to plastic and glass. In the automotive sector, Daimler (Mercedes) has chosen Woodoo to design touch-sensitive dashboards. During the last Viva Tech trade show in Paris, Guerlain has equipped its stand with wooden panels, this time serving as a screen wall. And many other well-known brands deal with the start-up to dress up boutique interiors, shape accessories, or for other uses. “The possibilities are endless: you can stain the wood in the color you want and it comes in many species: maple, sycamore, tulip tree… with, each time, different characteristics”, boasts Olivier Barn, Director of Marketing. There is even soft wood, a cousin of “leather” which would replace that of animal origin, very present in luxury.
Because, in the era of an awareness of global warming, wood is also an ecological argument for brands wishing to limit their environmental impact. “The carbon emissions of the wood that we use are 7 to 230 times lower than those of the materials that we want to replace”, indicates the founder of Woodoo, Timothée Boitouzet, who passed through prestigious American establishments, Harvard University as well as than the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The supply chains do not contain exotic wood, which contributes to deforestation. Its special process also makes it possible to reuse depreciated wood (or damaged), like poplar. The start-up closes the loop by recycling each of its wood waste, which can be reinjected into other productions replacing plastic. Everything is already patented.
Timothée Boitouzet, founder of the start-up Woodoo, presents samples of his modified wood on several different trees.
Woodoo
The future of construction?
However, Woodoo is aware of this: it is not with touch panels that the planet will be greener. But with new buildings and cities built entirely of wood, thus relegating concrete, which represents 7 to 8% of the greenhouse gases emitted on the planet, to the limbo of history. At the “Cellule” laboratory, the name of the Troyes factory, we work hard to solve the three major problems of wood: its flammability, its ability to rot and its fragility. If the resin partly solves the question, it remains impossible to manufacture wooden skyscrapers. Olivier Grange hands us a “stack”, a stack of “slim” layers, which manages to reproduce the smooth and shiny appearance of marble. It seems almost as solid; it actually compares more to aluminum.
Woodoo is therefore always refining its resin recipe and is now turning to artificial intelligence for quality control, in order to optimize the diffusion of its resin in its wood. “It is very difficult to standardize a natural product like this”, observes Olivier Grange. While waiting to be able to build buildings one day, contracts with beautiful luxury houses are turning theirs. “A lot of companies have gone through this type of intermediate market. In the 1990s, the manufacturer Tesla only sold hyperluxury vehicles, then it gradually moved into the mainstream market, points out Timothée Boitouzet. try to go as fast as possible. Every month gained is important to save the planet.”