Jorge Penadés shows new uses for olive tree roots in Uprooted exhibition

Spanish designer Jorge Penadés has unveiled a Madrid Design Festival exhibition showing how the discarded roots of olive trees could be turned into design objects. The industrialisation of olive oil production in Andalucía has led to a mass unearthing of native trees, many of which are chopped up and sold as firewood. With Uprooted, curated by The post Jorge Penadés shows new uses for olive tree roots in Uprooted exhibition appeared first on Dezeen.

Jorge Penadés shows new uses for olive tree roots in Uprooted exhibition

Spanish designer Jorge Penadés has unveiled a Madrid Design Festival exhibition showing how the discarded roots of olive trees could be turned into design objects.

The industrialisation of olive oil production in Andalucía has led to a mass unearthing of native trees, many of which are chopped up and sold as firewood.

Uprooted exhibition by Jorge Penadés at Madrid Design Festival — Uprooted showcased the potential of olive roots in furniture production

With Uprooted, curated by Seetal Solanki of material research design studio Ma-tt-er, Penadés showed how this unusual type of wood could have other uses.

On show at Espacio Gaviota for the duration of Madrid Design Festival, the exhibition saw him turn olive roots into furniture and small objects.

Uprooted chair by Jorge Penadés — Exhibits included a chair made from interlocking planes of olive wood

"I looked at how other designers and artists have used roots in the past and it's always in a more sculptural way," Penadés told Dezeen.

"They use it as the base for a little table or something; it's craft rather than a contemporary design language."

Penadés believes olive wood could have greater value if we understood how to get the best out of it.

The designer has been exploring the potential of this material on and off for the past 10 years, having carried out a material research study as a recent graduate in 2014.

His interest stems from growing up in Andalucía – the southern Spanish region responsible for over 20 per cent of global olive oil production.

Olive wood in Andalucía — The wood is a waste product from the olive oil industry in Andalucía

The shift from manual olive picking to intensive industrial harvesting has transformed the landscape. Where trees would naturally grow in clusters, they are instead planted systematically in grids.

"They uproot the native olive trees and plant new trees in grids with a gap of five to seven metres in between, so the trucks can access them," Penadés explained.

Olive trees in Andalucía — Native olive trees are uprooted and replaced with new trees, planted in grids

For years, Penadés has been looking for new ways to work with this waste wood. A breakthrough came in 2022, when he used it to create a set of stools for a pop-up store for footwear brand Camper.

With Uprooted, Penadés and Solanki wanted to test the material further.

With this particular variety of olive tree, the roots offer a more abundant source of wood than the trunk. The issue is that the root structure can be highly complex, with unusual grains, knots and embedded stones.

"When you take the root to the carpenter and ask them to slice it, they don't want to because they might damage the machinery," Penadés said.

To better understand the material's properties, he and Solanki came up with the idea of "interviewing" the material.

They came up with a list of 99 questions, which provided the framework for the exhibition. They include the likes of "What if we carve you?" and "What if we remove your bark?"

These questions informed Penadés's material experiments, which resulted in a series of furniture prototypes including chairs, a bookshelf, a coffee table and a wall lamp.

"Roots have a completely different logic to tree trunks," the designer said.

"Trunks grow in a linear way looking for the sun, so you get these rings. But roots grow organically, looking for nutrients and water, so they don't follow the same pattern," he continued. "It means you get different densities."

Shelf by Jorge Penadés — Among the results is a tall shelving unit

The exhibition also included images by photographer Max Creasy, showcasing the olive tree uprooting process and its impact on the Andalucían landscape.

Penadés hopes the show can be a springboard for a greater appreciation of this underused material.

In an interview with Dezeen in 2023, the designer said that resourcefulness was a key part of his process as a designer. "I'm interested in finding new possibilities in what already exists out there," he said at the time.

Jorge Penadés — Penadés hopes to find more ways of working with olive wood in future

A similar mindset underpinned his 2015 breakthrough project, Structural Skin, which saw him create a colourful wood-like material out of waste leather.

"We need to be more inclusive with materials but we can only be smarter with materials if we understand their properties," he said.

Uprooted was on show at Espacio Gaviota from 8 to 22 February as part of Madrid Design Festival. See Dezeen Events Guide for more design events around the globe.

The post Jorge Penadés shows new uses for olive tree roots in Uprooted exhibition appeared first on Dezeen.