Leaf Pulp

Foli.age

Foli.age is a material process developed through the research of connecting material movements back to the land. It is a practice that looks at leaves and flora as a tool that has been planted, labelled, and reinstated in connection to the built environment. Through the study of leaves, Foli.age investigates the plants of a particular place and materialises to tell stories of the land it is connected to. This is an architectural exploration of making a material from elements of the land and reconnecting it back to where it was extracted from.

While experimenting with the transformation of a decaying plant towards a material, this project highlights the documentation of the relationship with how it lives and dies again. Beginning with a new form, the study explores different interactions the leaf material has with its environment. When exposed to moisture it begins to slowly warp and as it dries it shrinks and crumbles. Each interpretation of the material draws towards where the leaves came from, and with time the pieces will find its own form drawing back towards the ground. Foli.age opens up the questions of how to adapt towards our building materials instead of treating them like separate entities.

The research began in Syracuse, NY where fallen oak leaves were used to experiment on how what is often considered waste can become a material. The beginning stages use methods of paper making to create thin swatches of the leaves. Each swatch is studied for its strength, colour, smell, and unique way their fibres look as they reconnect. Like a pile of leaves, the pieces created embed themselves back into the land where they continue to decay. It is a material that is meant to dictate its own time. It will rot and find a new function. Looking at the scale of an object as well as the material that constructs that object.

Foli.age is a constant study towards a relationship with material that can relate towards where they were extracted from. The leaves used are remade into reparations of histories that become buried. Research based in New York City looked at Central Park as a landscaping of foreign plants simultaneously displacing Seneca Village, a black community, and labelling native wetland plants as weeds. Using the weeds growing in Central park today, they were materialised into shoes that were excavated by archaeologists, connecting to Seneca Village. These weeds were used by Seneca Village medicinally. Like the land that is constantly changing as a result of the built environment, it is also at the detriment of people that comes from current material movement and extraction. F

oli.age follows a basic understanding of how materials are made, but through leaves it acts as something that is living and will ultimately die again. Foli.age is research that challenges the functions of a material as not only centred around people but driven by its origins. It welcomes the inevitable fragility and temporality that is often ignored in built practices.

Making process

After collecting the leaves, depending on how strong of colour you would like to keep, allow them to dry for 1-2 days. Begin by washing the leaves to separate any sediment that could potentially grow mould. Add the leaves to a pot with water and leave to boil for 2 hours. Separate the leaves, and blend to a pulp. To thicken the leaves add flour and for thin sheets add water.

Text submitted by the maker and edited by the Future Materials Bank. For information about reproducing (a part of) this text, please contact the maker.