Design Map · Eindhoven
Requiem of a Tree
Graduation project by Hanna Matera at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
In the forests of Lower Silesia in south-western Poland, where Hanna Matera grew up, trees have outlived the people who planted them. Many of whom were displaced following the post-war border shift. The designer considers these trees as non-verbal archives, carrying histories no longer recorded through human presence alone.
Honouring the cultures that once shaped this landscape, the installation presents blown glass sculptures that evoke a fallen forest of souls. By inflating molten glass inside hollow tree trunks collected from the region, Hanna Matera created translucent forms that resemble branches, bones or fossils, suspended between natural remains and archaeological relics. Raised on aluminium plinths bearing former German place names and mountain elevations, each sculpture emits whispers and recordings of wind in Polish and German. Together, they create the impression of a forest that remembers, showing how nature can retain traces of lives and histories beyond political borders and human conflict.