Material Matters with Grant Gibson

Nov 18 2024 123 ep. 51 mins 530

Material Matters with Grant Gibson Podcast artwork

In Material Matters, host Grant Gibson talks to a designer, maker, artist, architect, engineer, or scientist about a material or technique with which they’re intrinsically linked and discovers how it changed their lives and careers.

Follow us on Instagram @materialmatters.design and our website www.materialmatters.design

The Material Matters fair will return in 2025, as part of the London Design Festival.

Material Matters is produced and published by Delizia Media Ltd.

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Mark Hearld on collage.

Nov 18 2024 59 mins

Mark Hearld is an artist and designer who has a fascination with flora and fauna and has worked in a range of different media – including lithographic and linocut prints, painting, ceramics, textiles and tapestry. However, he is best known for his collage pieces. A graduate of Glasgow School of Art and the Royal College of Art, he has curated installations and exhibitions at York

Todd Bracher on light (and designing Net Positive products).

Nov 11 2024 66 mins

Todd Bracher is a US-based product designer who has worked with brands such as Humanscale, 3M, Herman Miller, Georg Jensen and Issey Miyake through his eponymous studio, winning a slew of awards along the way. More recently, he created another company, Betterlab, in which he collaborates with scientists and innovators to, in his words, ‘shape emerging research and foundational te

Zena Holloway on grass roots.

Oct 21 2024 46 mins

Zena Holloway is a bio-designer and founder of Rootfull, which creates exquisite clothes, lights and sculptures from grass roots. She started her career as an underwater photographer, doing extraordinary high-end fashion shoots, as well as working with the likes of Kylie Minogue, Tom Daley, Katie Price and numerous other celebrities. At the same time, she was capturing the effects

Alkesh Parmar on orange peel.

Sep 10 2024 45 mins

Alkesh Parmar is a designer and researcher. Over the years, he has hollowed out champagne corks and turned them into chandeliers, as well as transforming traditional Indian terracotta cups into light fittings. But he is best known for his work with citrus peel in general – and orange peel in particular.Using a material generally thought of as waste, he has created a variety of ex

Sanne Visser on human hair.

Sep 02 2024 57 mins

Sanne Visser is a Dutch-born, London-based designer. She describes herself as a ‘material explorer, maker and researcher’, who is best known for a string of installations and products using human hair. Since graduating from Central Saint Martins a little under a decade ago, she has exhibited all over the world and been nominated for a number of awards. Happily too, she will be

Bharti Kher on material alchemy and her fascination with bindis.

Aug 26 2024 62 mins

Artist Bharti Kher was brought up in England before moving to India almost on a whim in the early ’90s. Since then, she has established herself as a major player on the international art scene. Her sculptures talk about women’s place in society and the female body. She has a fascination with mythology and mixing the real with the magical, as well as a profound interest in mater

Oliver Heath on biophilic design.

Aug 19 2024 52 mins

Oliver Heath is a designer, architect, author and one of the world’s leading advocates for biophilic design. Along with his team and the sustainable platform Planted, he currently has an exhibition at the Roca Gallery in South London, which focuses firmly on bio design – illustrating what it is, why it’s important, and how it can be used in the spaces we inhabit. Oliver has b

Ernest Scheyder on lithium, mining, and the politics behind going green.

Jun 09 2024 52 mins

Ernest Scheyder is an author and senior correspondent for Reuters. His new book, The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives, looks at the impact of the green transition in the US – and, more particularly, the tensions over the increasing need to mine for metals to decarbonise the grid (and power a plethora of devices) against the nation’s desire to

Adi Toch on why she buries copper.

May 22 2024 54 mins

Adi Toch is one of the world’s most fascinating metal artists, who over the years has buried her pieces for months on end before digging them up, and even made them react to sound. She has also taken part in collaborations with furniture makers and glass artists. Adi has work in the permanent collections of the V&A, The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, Ulster Museum in Northe

Human Nature's Jonathan Smales on mining the Anthropocene, and building in timber and Hempcrete at The Phoenix.

May 13 2024 66 mins

Jonathan Smales is a housing developer like few others. He is the co-founder and executive chairman of Human Nature, whose new project, The Phoenix, on the outskirts of Lewes, East Sussex in the UK, has just won planning permission. What makes the development different? The Phoenix will contain 685 homes, designed by a roster of fascinating architects, who will be working in materi