Benches – alcarol

WETLAND ONE SIDE Bench

marcoresenterra — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 15:42:44 +0000

A wetland is a water-saturated ecosystem where, in rare conditions, nature can preserve wood for thousands of years. Abonos—a Celtic name for this “fossil” wetland timber—emerges from a few Alpine alluvial areas, where minerals and water have initiated a natural semi-fossilization of submerged trees.
Over millennia, currents bonded iron and minerals with the tannins in the wood, hardening its structure and colouring its grain. This creates an extraordinary chromatic spectrum—from golden hues to deep black—with shades and patterns that are always unique, shaped by the environment that protected them.
Once brought back to light, this ancient wood is recovered and processed through a long, meticulous work, allowing it to re-emerge like a jewel of the past. alcarol surrounds its organic edges with transparent resin that recalls the original water, preserving every detail and enhancing its ancestral beauty.
The natural wood surface remains exposed on the section planes, allowing you to touch the warm, living essence of a material that has survived across ages—now transformed into a timeless contemporary piece.

6:44 AM HORIZONS _ Mirror Seat

marcoresenterra — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 15:42:44 +0000

6:44 AM HORIZONS is an exploration around human perception of landscapes, with an eye towards sky and space.
alcarol’s research expands on the concept of horizons by emphasizing the importance of the sky in defining them. The design integrates elements of mountains, sky, and cosmos, blending them with abstract representations of planetary geologies.
The seat, made of verdigris velvet, reflects the Italian Alps while incorporating textures inspired by other planets. This abstraction aims to highlight the similarities between Earth and other celestial bodies, surprising viewers with unexpected softness.
The piece evokes the pre-sunrise copper dawn sky, using a mirrored steel with burnished an copper patinas representing a cloudy sunrise and invoking the atmosphere of other planets. The material used is intentionally unconventional, sometimes appearing frozen or suspended, adding to the dreamy contemplation of the piece.

TRAIL RIVER Bench

marcoresenterra — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 15:42:32 +0000

The Trail River Bench is shaped from two planks of undergrowth wood sourced in the Dolomites, still bearing their natural edges and native mosses. These living traces are preserved in a crystal-clear resin that evokes the forest waters that once sustained them.
Each plank is cut into three sections and seamlessly rejoined so that the grain flows unbroken, bending gently through corners as if shaped by time and movement. The resin follows this same continuity, without visible joins, creating the illusion of a single gesture, as if the material had curved on its own.
This piece is a path in wood and water, a suspended fragment of forest trail. It invites rest, but also remembrance: of shaded ground, living textures, and the soft silence of moss beneath the trees.

PEATLAND Bench

marcoresenterra — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 15:42:05 +0000

Alcarol has recovered extraordinary black oak trunks preserved in a remote Alpine peatland, aged through centuries beneath acidic, oxygen-poor water and sediment. This peat environment prevented normal decay, while iron salts and minerals reacted with the wood’s tannins, darkening it and increasing its hardness. Each trunk tells a story of deep time and silent transformation.
In the Peatland Bench, the wood ascends from its earthly origin, stretches outward as seating surface, and then symbolically returns toward the ground, completing a loop of time and matter. The structure is bound by an invisible angular junction, precise and concealed, reinforcing the notion of continuity and seamless transition—a bench where joinery disappears and the material flows freely.
The natural live edges remain intact, their erosion-carved contours preserved to remind the viewer of a wood shaped by water, sediment and centuries. Transparent cast elements evoke the still waters that once enveloped the tree, yet allow the hand to touch the warm, living surface of ancient oak.
This is not just a bench—it is a bridge across epochs, where nature’s rhythm of ascending and returning is honoured in form and function. A seat that invites presence and reflection, rooted in the land, shaped by time, and crafted without visible seams.

CREEK Bench _ Chestnut

marcoresenterra — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 15:42:05 +0000

Alcarol recovered some old Chestnuts logs from the undergrowth of the Italian Dolomite mountains and preserve the natural bark surface, which is embedded in a resin resembling the water that generated their life.
The design engages with the alcarol’s concept of environmental cross-section. By filling the gaps with resin, alcarol achieves a new functionality with the poetic choice to freeze time at the end of the tree’s life cycle.
In Creek Bench the jagged edges of chestnut wood section planes look each other just like banks, separated by a sinous resin creek: a perfect recall of a Dolomites nature’s view.

TRAIL Bench

marcoresenterra — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 15:41:53 +0000

alcarol recovered some logs from the undergrowth of the Italian Dolomite mountains and cut planks that preserve the natural edges with their native populations of mosses, which are embedded in a resin resembling the water that generated their life.
The Trail Bench is made from a single wood plank, cut into three parts with a very thin blade and then joined so that in the corners the woodgrain matches perfectly like a single bent piece, and also the resin – through a special process – is a single piece and not seen separations between horizontal and vertical resin edges. The invisible corner joining by alcarol is also suitable for tables, consoles and other similar types on request.
This piece is a walk trought the forest, it’s a path to immerse in the fresh sensations of the greenery that animate the woods.

BENT Bench

marcoresenterra — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 15:41:41 +0000

The Bent Bench is born from a single plank of Venetian Briccola oak, its form gently rising, bending, and returning – an elegant gesture that spans space like a silent wave. The live edges, sculpted by salt and time, remain intact, while resin bands frame and protect the delicate margins, embracing the wood in a translucent sheath that echoes the lagoon’s flow.
Through a refined process, wood grain meets seamlessly at corners, and resin flows uninterrupted with no visible seams, bestowing a purity of form. The bench becomes a continuous ribbon of memory and matter, where every curve is a whisper of water and wood in quiet conversation.
This bench is more than seating: it is a passage between vertical and horizontal, a moment of Venice frozen in bending line. It invites touch, sight and stillness, as if holding space for the silent tides that shaped it.