This is a sweet little piece of design crack in which the London design duo, Draw Me a Sheep, takes an elemental piece of nature such as a tree trunk and asks, “Is nature really that good?”. In Bo-Young Jung and Emmanuel Wolf’s series, called Nature V2.01, they explore the forms of nature and whether the forms couldn’t be tweaked for better consumption.

Take the tree trunk for instance. Wouldn’t is be so much more convenient if a tree grew in a perfect square? I mean, think of all the wasted wood generated in a sawmill when a round tree has to be cut into its component parts. Not to mention, the square tree trunk also makes for more useful bench. Of course, Draw Me a Sheep has not actually genetically modified the tree to produce this form! The log is simply a plywood frame carefully wrapped with excess bark to create the illusion of nature. The effect is shocking at first glance. When I saw this piece, for instance, I immediately started to think of the possibilities. Like, why can’t flowers be big enough to use as umbrellas? or could plants be combined with cows to make vegetarian meat?… Wait, isn’t someone working on that?