After Uprooting

A cardboard-based composite invites a material-led relationship with a more-than-human site.

Role: Independent designer-researcher
Material: Cardboard-fibre composite
Methods: Recipes, probes, form finding
Year: 2026

After Uprooting root-like structure installed outdoors

Material-driven design

Letting the material change the direction.

After Uprooting is an acorn catcher developed through material-driven design. Discarded cardboard was processed into a fibre composite, then tested through variations in mixing, shaping, hydration, and drying. Its sensitivity to moisture produced forms that could not be fully determined in advance.

Rather than treating this unpredictability as a flaw, the process used it to guide the object’s development. The composite’s folds and irregular surfaces informed a root-like form that catches acorns beneath a tree. The finished object reflects both the behaviour of its material and the environment in which it is used.

Final After Uprooting structure on white — The final form stays visibly fibrous, porous, and open to environmental change.

From 3.3g
to 100g.

The first recipe used 3.3 grams of cardboard per 100 millilitres of water. Across six recipes, the cardboard content gradually increased to 100 grams.

Systematic documentation made small variations visible: fibre density changed strength, drying changed curvature, and moisture could reactivate movement after the material had set.

Recipe and form finding

Preparation became a design tool.

Orange circular mold used for cardboard composite tests — Process Book Pages

Material movement

One sample, six stages of response.

Form finding

A structure imagined as rerooting.

Speculative reasoning reframed the composite as something that could reroot itself. That narrative guided the development of branching structures while hydration and dehydration kept the form dynamic.

Aesthetic intention, material behavior, and story remained in tension. Leaving room for unexpected collapse, curling, and growth allowed the form to emerge through the process rather than before it.

Root-like fibre pattern developed during form finding — Fibres dried into branching patterns that suggested roots without copying them directly.

Probing the site

Moving from observation to participation.

Autoethnographic walks and collaging helped make sense of the relationships between the material, site, insects, microbes, plants, and people. These methods informed the placement of four early probes, three of which disappeared shortly afterward. Their disappearance became a finding in itself, drawing attention to activity at the site that was difficult to observe directly and guiding the next experiments.

Collage documenting the multispecies field site — Layered site photographs helped connect material tests to the specific ecology around them.

Final installation

A temporary structure placed back into the environment.

After Uprooting standing beside a tree in the field — The finished form meets soil, changing weather, plants, animals, and human attention.

Close view of the After Uprooting base in soil — The base begins to merge with the site rather than remaining a sealed display object.

Broadening the design vision

Agency can sit with materials too.

Before this design, aking was mainly a way to give people more control over tools, repair, and adaptation. This project expanded that view: materials can also guide interaction and open pathways toward the more-than-human world.

Detailed view through the root-like composite structure — Openings and fibre density are consequences of making, drying, and material negotiation.