Inspiration through material
From 15 to 17 September, materials did the talking in Shoreditch. Material Matters was holding its fifth edition, its first as part of the brand-new Shoreditch Design Week, the largest district of the London Design Festival.
Set in UNLOCKED Shoreditch, the fair welcomed 3,072 visitors, almost seven in ten of them from the trade. More than forty exhibitors were spread across two floors. Downstairs were the brands and a bookshop curated with Useful Totem. Upstairs was a profusion of prototypes and materials barely out of the lab. Visitors discovered FRONT and Biomason’s Mimmik Tile, a bacteria-grown tile now produced at industrial scale. Spared, Prima Materia and Blast Studio gave construction and fashion waste new life, and Zieta Studio’s inflated-steel Whispers Bench greeted everyone at the entrance. Twelve Café Conversations, shaped with Berghaus, set the rhythm of the fair. The talks moved from circularity to British timber, all the way to an AI guided by the human hand.
With this edition, the platform founded by Grant Gibson and William Knight confirms its place as a reference for material intelligence, to follow at materialmatters.design.•
Photos : Pani Jurek Studio, Material Matters London 2026 © Philip Vile • Shifu Artisans,Material Matters London 2026 © Philip Vile
