“It’s like nose-to-tail eating, but for trees,” says Paloma Gormley, co-founder of the ecological design studio Material Cultures. “Industrial timber production is so wasteful. We should be making the most of every element of the tree, from its bark to the natural glue-like lignins and rosins – it all has value.”
The organisation’s philosophy is currently on display at London’s V&A in a show called Material Cultures: Woodland Goods. A hairy brown wall hangs in the museum’s furniture gallery, alongside some unusual plywood stools whose seats have been exchanged for slabs of compressed bark. Nearby are sheet materials made from pine needles and sap, papery silver birch bark encrusted with dried moss, and other experiments with things gathered from the forest. It’s quite a contrast to the polished furniture on display in the museum’s permanent collection, as if there’d been a rustic takeover by a crafty team of beavers and squirrels.
Gormley, who is the daughter of sculptor Antony, founded Material Cultures with Summer Islam and George Massoud in 2019. While most architects are used to selecting proprietary products from catalogues, often without knowing much about their origin or impact – pairing aluminium composite cladding panels with petrochemical insulation systems – this trio prefer to go back to the land and harvest their materials from the natural environment.
