Paper Forest by Petra Eichler and Susanne Kessler

Petra Eichler and Susanne Kessler
Paper Forest, 2006

A forest made of white silhouettes, shifting light, and birdsong invited visitors to slow down and step into an imagined landscape. Presented with Droog at the Salone del Mobile in April 2006, the installation formed part of their Sounds of Silence series.

Five layers of large white cut-outs, each measuring 16 metres long and 3.26 metres high, created a forest clearing that visitors could walk through. Its delicate surfaces encouraged careful movement, turning a simple passage through the space into an attentive encounter. Lighting by Herbert Cybulska moved through colours associated with dusk and dawn, while Martin Bott’s soundscape of bird calls brought the scene to life.

Abstraction from a forest, cut out of pieces of Tyvek. The deeper you enter the forest, the more suspense you experience as a result of deformed bird calls and animals coming up.

The project’s beginnings lay in a snowy walk through Frankfurt in December 2004. As snowfall softened the city’s sounds and reflected its light, Eichler and Kessler began thinking about how to recreate that heightened awareness of a place. Their four-part Sounds of Silence series followed between October 2005 and March 2006, exploring silence as something rich in small sounds, changing moods and unexpected details.

Following its Milan presentation, the paper forest was acquired by the Hangaram Design Museum in Seoul and shown at Designmade 2006.