Wood is …?
An open prompt for material experiments
by Whatnot Studio
Whatnot Studio is a year-long design lab at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where students create a collection for whatnot, the school’s in-house product brand. This year’s exhibition, Wood is …?, takes wood as its central theme — as material, metaphor, technology, and site of experimentation.
Through research, prototyping, and small-batch production, students test how wood can carry ideas as well as function: density and lightness, precision and imperfection, structure and intuition. The course moves between product design and material inquiry, resulting in objects that are both producible and exploratory.
The title is conceived as an open sentence, inviting each project to complete it differently. Each work approaches wood from its own angle, while contributing to a shared studio direction shaped by experimentation, iteration, and material exploration.
