Material Matters London

Day One: 15 September

13:30-14.15

Five decades of GORE-TEX

In the first of a series of talks from our Thought Leadership Partner, Berghaus, we celebrate five decades of this extraordinary, waterproof, windproof and breathable material used in everything from skiwear to running shoes with the brand’s Murray Macadam. 

Speaker: Murray Macadam, Gore sales associate

15.00-15.45

Working with Waste

According to the government, the UK generates well over a million tonnes of waste every year, much of it coming from the construction and fashion industries. But what should we do with it?  This panel discussion picks out four Material Matters exhibitors to investigate how designers are finding ingenious ways to use the stuff other people throw away. The conversation travels from London to Accra, Ghana.

Speakers: 
Callie Tedder-Hares, co-founder, Spared 
Jeremy Hulse, founder and director, Prima Materia 
Kennie MacCarthy, assistant manager of product development, The Or Foundation 
Paola Garnousset, co-founder, Blast Studio

Chair: Katie Treggiden, author, journalist, speaker and strategist

16.00-16.45

Local Knowledge, Global Design: Poland's creative industries

A conversation on Polish design's rising international influence, and what it means for the country's creative industries. The panel looks at the rise of Polish design as a cultural export, how a new generation of studios is turning local material intelligence into international influence, and what that signals about Poland's growing creative economy.

Speakers: 
Michal Borecki, co-founder, Pani Jurek Studio
Agata Zieta, Zieta Studio
Samta Nadeem, curatorial director, STIR 

17.30-18.30

Only Natural Student Design Competition Awards

Only Natural is a global movement promoting the use of natural materials in contemporary design. It champions fibres such as wool, hemp, leather and wood as renewable, durable alternatives to synthetic materials. 

At its core is the student design competition, which invites emerging designers to explore the creative potential of nature-based materials across fashion, furniture and interiors. This is your chance to discover who has won the big prizes. 

Day Two: 16 September

12.30-13.15

The power of international collaboration: with the British Council

A talk exploring the impact and importance of international collaboration in material innovation through the lens of the British Council’s New Landscapes India programme. New Landscapes is an international programme and catalyst grant scheme in partnership with University of Arts London's Fashion, Textiles and Technology Institute, which nurtures new research and development projects between small and medium enterprises in the UK and other countries, most recently India. Speakers include material innovators who have developed new products and services through the programme.

Speakers: 
Dian-Jen Lin, co-founder and CEO of Post Carbon Lab
Annalisa Dunn, co-founder and director of The Stitch Archive
Jo Salter, founder and director of Where Does it Come From? and co-director at Khadi London

Chair: Sally Denton, associate director of academic partnerships at FTTI

13.30-14.15

Broken to beautiful: the art of repair

The second of our Berghaus talks focuses on the importance of repair and dovetails with the Repairhaus installation in the Material Matters London entrance hall. A starry panel discusses why repair matters, how we collectively forgot how to repair, and the systems required for big brands to repair effectively. 

Speakers: 
Jennifer Sammons, product quality manager, Berghaus
Christopher Raeburn, founder & creative director, Raeburn

15.00-15.45

Growing the future

How can we use materials such as seaweed, bacteria, tomato peel and bio char to create a better future? How do we bridge the gap between scientific innovation and industrial application? Can these materials be used at scale? And how important are designers to these processes? These are just a few of the questions that will be investigated during this panel discussion. 

Speakers:
Ward Massa, co-founder & CEO, Front Materials 
Elizabeth Lee, co-founder & CEO, Carbon Cell
India Iles, designer 
Baptiste Arribe, CEO, The New Materialist

Chair: Debika Ray, cultural journalist, editor and strategic adviser

16.00-16.45

A multi-material future – how designers are working with a palette of timber species and bio-based materials

What does it mean to shape the design of buildings around a palette of available natural resources, with each material chosen for its particular strengths? This is a talk based around The Wood Awards installation, which features speakers from three shortlisted projects. Each project brings a different perspective, yet all are linked by shaping their design to make thoughtful use of an assemblage of timbers, wood products and bio-based materials.

The panel will discuss: whether design should shift to respond to underused natural resources? What they've learnt from combining different materials? How choices in specification can help keep managed woodlands alive and flourishing? And what needs to change in the supply chain to make this approach easier?

Speakers:
Finbar Charleson, architect & research Lead, dRMM
Cristina Monteiro, founding co-director, DK-CM
Alex Lynes, associate director, Webb Yates

Chair: Kirsten Haggart, associate director, Waugh Thistleton Architects

18.00-18.45

Negroni Talk: Facade Charade

While fashion changes with the seasons, architecture can take a decade to get planning permission. A building designed today can easily end up being passé by the time it gets built years later, so what does this say about the relevance of contemporary architecture as a product and expression of the zeitgeist?

Despite a desire for it to be tailored to its surroundings and to ‘fit in’, architecture still oscillates between the standout and the uniform, between the bland and the bling, the pattern book and the custom made. If ‘Style’ is about having a distinctive character, a mode of expression and a point of difference, then why do many buildings look the same and seem dead on arrival?

The built environment is a historical record of what has been considered fashionable. So what do our new buildings say about us and who is setting these architectural trends? If architecture is all about appearance, this is only façade deep. Have architects become mere building stylists, rather than a truly creative force for change that is pioneering and progressive as well as expressive?

Speakers: 
Melodie Leung, director,  ZHA
Eimear Hanratty, associate director, O'Donnell + Tuomey
Priya Khanchandani, curator, writer and broadcaster
Paul Gorman, writer, curator, and commentary on visual culture

Chair: Stephen Sinclair, co-founder and director, Fourth Space

Day Three: 17 September

13.30-14.15

Kit that gets you through

The third talk from Berghaus focusses on inclusive design. Sabrina Pace Humphries co-founded Black Trail Runners, a community and campaigning charity that exists to increase the inclusion, participation and representation of the Global majority in trail running in the UK and beyond. More speakers to be announced soon.

Speakers: 
Sabrina Pace Humphries, co-founder, Black Trail Runners
Rachel Alsbury, vice president of design, Berghaus

15.00-15.45

Hand Code Matter

Artificial Intelligence is often seen as just that – artificial. But instead of counter-posing AI with the ‘authentic’ processes of hand-making and drawing, what happens when we combine it with analogue processes? 

Hand Code Matter, an exhibition presented by Matrix Design at Material Matters, launches a new AI-powered platform Lovspark and shows how AI can enhance rather than detract from creativity. 

This panel discussion involves recent architecture graduates who have tested Lovspark, and designers from China who are pioneering its use for projects across the world.

Speakers:
Luke Gifford, architectural designer
Zhou Fang, project director, Matrix Design
Jiaying Feng, product manager, Lovspark

Chair: Vicky Richardson, curator and writer and founder of Pick Up Architecture

16.00-16.45

The quick fire showcase

To close the fair, we ask five of our exhibitors to do a quick fire presentation each. Expect to hear about new uses for hemp; how we should value urban timber; how to integrate wildlife into our architecture; creating contemporary furniture from an ancient technique; and the future of high performance materials.  

Nathan Loxley, co-founder,  LOXKIN
Bruce Saunders, managing director, Fallen & Felled  
Anna UitdeHaag and Bart Stok, Stoksel furniture
Genevieve Boaler, Ultrafabrics
Zain Ansari, co-founder and CEO, Phyta Biodesign