Material Matters with Grant Gibson
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
Material Matters is produced and published by Delizia Media Ltd.
Episodes
138 episodes
Bonnie Hvillum on biomaterials and 'redefining wood'.
Bonnie Hvillum is a Danish designer and founder of Natural Material Studio, which, as the names suggests, makes its own materials using natural resources and various waste streams. Working at the meeting point between material scien...
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Season 20
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Episode 4
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45:02
Anglepoise's Simon Terry on durability, repair and creating an icon.
Simon Terry is the brand and marketing director, as well as owner (or as he prefers to describe himself, custodian), of the lamp company, Anglepoise, a product that has genuine claims to iconic status. Initially designed by George Carwardine in...
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Season 20
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Episode 3
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59:31
Lulu Harrison on making glass from the River Thames.
Lulu Harrison is a researcher and maker in sustainable material development. She creates glass pieces that have often been inspired by ancient making techniques, working with local and waste resources. Over the years, she has collab...
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Season 20
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Episode 2
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45:58
Robin Givhan on her new book, Make it Ours, and how Virgil Abloh changed fashion.
Robin Givhan is the Washington Post’s senior critic-at-large, writing about politics, race and the arts. She won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2006 and is the author of The Battle of Versailles: The Night American Fashion Stu...
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Season 20
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Episode 1
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1:04:54
Sabine Marcelis on recycled aluminium and resin.
Sabine Marcelis is a Rotterdam-based designer and artist who, in her own words, is ‘forever in search of magical moments within materials’. She’s probably best known for her work in glass, resin and stone, which often plays with light and water...
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Season 19
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Episode 8
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54:09
AHEC's David Venables on US hardwood forests and using what nature provides.
David Venables is the European director for the American Hardwood Export Council. Over the last 20 years, the organisation has created an array of extraordinary installations, sculptures and products – working with the likes of Alison Brooks, W...
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Season 19
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Episode 7
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58:04
Rosa Whiteley on shells and creating a new building material.
Rosa Whiteley is a designer, writer and researcher, who trained as an architect at Manchester School of Architecture and the Royal College of Art. Subsequently, she has worked within Cooking Sections, the Turner Prize nominated desi...
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Season 19
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Episode 6
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55:47
Claudy Jongstra on working with wool and creating her own biodynamic farm.
Claudy Jongstra is a Dutch artist and designer who has become globally renowned for her, often monumental, textile installations and tapestries made from wool. After establishing her studio in Friesland in the Dutch countryside duri...
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Season 19
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Episode 5
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56:09
Tim Minshall on manufacturing, tariffs, silicon, and green hushing.
Tim Minshall is an expert in manufacturing and innovation. He is the inaugural Dr John C Taylor professor of innovation at the University of Cambridge, the head of the Engineering Department’s Institute for Manufacturing and a fellow of Churchi...
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Season 19
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Episode 4
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1:09:04
Seetal Solanki on olive tree roots, cooking, and why materials matter.
Seetal Solanki describes herself as a materials translator and has been in the vanguard of material thinking since she launched her practice, Ma-tt-er, in 2015. Three years later she produced the hugely influential book, Why Mat...
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Season 19
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Episode 3
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57:19
Callum Robinson on wood and his new book Ingrained.
Callum Robinson makes all sorts of things out of wood, as well as being the creative director of Method Studio, the company he established with his wife, Marisa Giannasi, 15 years ago. In 2024, he published a fascinating, lyrical me...
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Season 19
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Episode 2
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53:38
Neil Brownsword on clay and safeguarding skill.
Neil Brownsword is one of the most intriguing – and uncompromising – ceramic artists currently practicing in the UK. His work is inspired by the de-industrialisation of his home city, Stoke-on-Trent, and, appropriately enough, his career in cer...
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Season 19
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Episode 1
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58:49
Zandra Rhodes on pattern, colour, and textiles.
Zandra Rhodes is one of the most recognisable and influential figures in fashion, as well as the founder of the Fashion and Textile Museum in London. Describing herself as both ‘chaotic’ and ‘fastidious’, she possesses a unique sens...
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Season 18
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Episode 10
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50:27
Aaron Betsky on why architects should stop building (and reuse instead).
Aaron Betsky is a US-based writer, educator and critic, who has served as director of the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Netherlands Architecture Institute, as well as a curator of architecture and design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Ar...
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Season 18
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Episode 9
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57:28
Nicole Rycroft on viscose and her mission to save the world's endangered forests.
Nicole Rycroft is the founder and executive director of the award-winning environmental not-for-profit, Canopy. Since it launched in 1999, the Vancouver-based organisation has worked with more than 950 companies – including Marks & Spencer,...
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Season 18
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Episode 8
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59:11
Mark Hearld on collage.
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 ...
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Season 18
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Episode 7
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59:56
Todd Bracher on light (and designing Net Positive products).
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 crea...
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Season 18
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Episode 6
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1:06:18
Zena Holloway on grass roots.
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 ...
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Season 18
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Episode 5
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46:41
Alkesh Parmar on orange peel.
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 ...
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Season 18
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Episode 4
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45:07
Sanne Visser on human hair.
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 Martin...
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Season 18
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Episode 3
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57:01
Bharti Kher on material alchemy and her fascination with bindis.
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 plac...
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Season 18
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Episode 2
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1:02:32
Oliver Heath on biophilic design.
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 foc...
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Season 18
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Episode 1
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52:22
Ernest Scheyder on lithium, mining, and the politics behind going green.
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, ...
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Season 17
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Episode 10
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52:36
Adi Toch on why she buries copper.
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...
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Season 17
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Episode 9
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54:01
Human Nature's Jonathan Smales on mining the Anthropocene, and building in timber and Hempcrete at The Phoenix.
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.
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Season 17
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Episode 8
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1:06:23