Japanese mobile phone monolith Docomo has developed a mobile phone called the “Touch Wood” built from the excess wood collected during forest thinning.

The 1,900 square feet piece uses 50,000 wooden pieces to create the form of a hill or wave that rises to over 10 feet tall.

Jonas Damon’s Wooden Flashlight is currenty being sold at New York’s MoMA store as part of their Design At Home event.

Italian scientists are currently developing wood-based bone implants for animals and humans that may assist neighboring bones to heal quicker and with more support than the artificial ones available today, which are often made from metal and ceramic materials.
Wood appears to be a reliable substitute because of its close resemblance to the physical makeup of real bone. There is also the common problem of metal/ceramic implants contributing to complications in the healing process of the surrounding bones. Wood has the ability to do what materials such as titanium can’t- meld with living tissue.
This new method has not yet been cleared [...]

Team PSFK spotted this new frontage on the Diesel store on London’s Carnaby Street earlier this week. Made from plywood, they’ve made the store look like an old school radio.

A few wooden designs for electronics have cropped up on our radar recently. We get this from time to time. In the past we saw wooden laptop carry bags and with this installment we see wood cases for Apple laptops from Rainer Spehl and a wooden mini-computer from ryou. These types of designs always get a lot of attention on the blogs but you wonder if they get picked up for novelty and as a reaction to electronics design rather than any celebration of good design.