Michael Daubner: a simple block, a world of possibilities
From a wooden sculptor’s stool to adaptable learning spaces, the story behind Xbrick begins with a designer’s understanding of how people use objects.
Michael Daubner
Designer, co-founder and Managing Director, WD3
Michael Daubner’s background combines craft with an understanding of materials and construction. A master cabinetmaker and wood technologist, he studied under designer Arno Votteler before co-founding the Stuttgart design and development studio WD3 with Frank Westermann in 2016.
At first glance, Xbrick is a colourful rectangular block. Turn it, move it or put several together, and its possibilities start to emerge. A seat becomes a small surface. A group of blocks becomes a shared place to sit. Add the appropriate connectors and accessories, and the same elements can form larger arrangements.
An idea with roots in the workshop
The starting point was an object Michael knew from his own training: a wooden sculptor’s stool he made at the Berchtesgaden Woodcarving School. In a workshop, that straightforward form could serve several purposes, from a seat to a support or display pedestal.
Years later, while exploring flexible furniture for changing workspaces, Michael and the WD3 team returned to that idea. They experimented with recycled PET felt before settling on expanded polypropylene, or EPP. The material helped turn a familiar, substantial wooden object into something light enough to move readily between uses.
The work behind the simplicity
The pared-back appearance hides a demanding development process. In an interview with Design Center Baden-Württemberg, Michael described roughly a year of intensive work, including the challenge of producing precise edges, a textured surface and two matching hollow halves that fitted neatly together.
Xbrick received a Focus Open Gold award in 2018. Its story is a useful reminder that making an object look simple can require considerable design and manufacturing expertise.
Giving learners something they can change
In education, that versatility has a practical appeal. A learning space may need to support a discussion, a presentation, a quiet activity and a collaborative project within the same day. Furniture that is easy to reposition gives teachers and learners more options for arranging the room around the task.
Xbrick can work as an individual seat or small surface, while accessories extend it into benches, tables and connected seating arrangements. Paired with a Flomo board, the blocks can also support a writable tabletop. The supplied learning-landscapes material shows these elements being used for group work, informal exchanges, presentations and play.
Connecting the possibilities
There is also room for imagination. An open-ended object invites children to suggest a use, rearrange it and try again. That makes the act of shaping the environment part of the activity, rather than leaving every decision to the original room layout.
Design that leaves room for the user
For EDIC, the interest in Xbrick lies in the connection between its origins and its possibilities. Michael brought a familiar workshop object into a new context, then worked through the materials and production challenges needed to make it adaptable.
The result leaves room for the people using it to contribute ideas of their own. In a learning environment, that is a valuable quality: a design that gives teachers and students something useful to work with, and the freedom to decide what happens next.