FOLIUM
Schoolproject for Designskolen Kolding in collaboration with Louis Rose, Jesper Mumm Sylvest and Mads Byskov Jensen, 2019
A significant opportunity to design more sustainable products and solutions is to reinvent the materials they are made of. To that purpose, Folium’s experiments point at dead oak leaves as a potential resource to harness, and take us into the empirical, fascinating and gently mad-scientist-like world of bio-based materials development.
Folium is not a material, but a collection of material experiments and an experimental protocol that allows us to embrace the development of bio-based materials.
CASE
This project challenged us to identify and experiment with an overlooked stream of local natural resources that could lead to the development of responsible and green-minded materials.
Walking in green spaces and forest like urban parenthesis led us to notice a wide range of potential resources. We ended up gathering piles of diverse withered leaves.
APPROACH
Preliminary experiments revealed the interesting properties of oak leaves due to a high amount of tannins. Tannins which has for long been used in processes such as wine making or leather tanning. Our experiments hinted at tannins ability to act as a binder, allowing us to develop a binder material. Furthermore, cooked and burnt oak leaves displayed metallic-like reflections that we also attributed, though without certitude, to their tannin content.
​
Moving towards a 100% oak leaf mono material, extracting the tannins and shredding leaves to constitute a filler - and after many iterations - led us to promising samples that could be shaped, further machined and polished once dry.
