Amarar
Furniture that regenerates
In August of 2020 a cap de fibló (tornado) razed more than 300,000 trees in the Serra de Tramuntana, causing a huge amount of damage in municipalities like Esporles, Bunyola and Banyalbufar. At the time Sebastià Martorell, Jaume Crespí, Toni Galmés and Francisco Cifuentes created Amarar, in order to reuse all of the fallen timber to make furniture that showcases the pine wood of Mallorca.
text César Mateu Moyà
photography Photographs by Xim Izquierdo on loan from the LOOP Design and Circularity project, which aims to raise awareness of the concept of circularity and link it to design professionals and the productive sectors.
Amarar is the action of submerging the tree trunks in salt water after they have been cut down. This treatment serves to make the wood more resistant. Centuries ago, real seawater was used to carry out this process on wood. “The tree trunks were tied to boats, and the transportation by sea between ports would be used to apply the treatment”, says Álex Martínez, a worker at Amarar. Nowadays other spaces are used, such as safareigs or large water tanks, where the wood is immersed and treated.
The cap de fibló that affected Mallorca nearly three years ago “is just the tip of the iceberg of the huge mass of disused forest on Mallorca. From the 1950s until now, this abandoned mass has grown by 40%, which makes for a great deal of potentially inflammable material in summer”, those in charge [...]
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