Material Matters with Grant Gibson Grant Gibson

Paul Cocksedge is a London-based designer who has built a reputation over the past twenty years for creating projects that push the limits of technology and materials. During that time, for example, he has melted polystyrene cups in an oven to make a lamp shade, treated steel as if it was a folded piece of paper, worked with concrete from the floor of his own studio, and fused metal under the snow. 
His CV contains major exhibitions at galleries such as Friedman Benda in New York and Carpenters Workshop Gallery in London, installations in Milan, public art projects such as Please Be Seated and Drop for the London Design Festival and products that range from picnic blankets inspired by the pandemic to a bluetooth device that gives old speakers a second life. 
His most recent exhibition, called Coalescence, which was held earlier in March at Liverpool Cathedral, investigated coal. 
In this episode we talk about: why he decided to work with coal; going down a mine in South Wales; emotionally ‘feeling’ his ideas; the role anger plays in his creative process; his early fascination with light; the influence on his career of Marc Benda, Ingo Maurer, Ron Arad and Joana Pinho; making a steel table ‘dance’ and turning the concrete floor of his studio into furniture; wanting to be a pilot as a child; ‘bribing’ his way into the Royal College of Art with fake fivers; bonding metal under snow; and why he doesn’t want to be an architect. 
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Ineke Hans is a world-renowned product and furniture designer. She originally studied art at Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Arnhem before switching to design. In 1993, she moved to London’s Royal College of Art and, subsequently, worked for Habitat as a furniture designer. 
By the end of the decade she was focusing on her own work and, since then, clients have included Ahrend, Arco, Iittala, SCP and Magis to name just a few.  Currently, she spilts her time between Arnhem and Berlin, where she is professor in the product and fashion design department of UDK university in Berlin. 
Most recently she has created, Rex, a sustainable and recyclable chair for start-up company Circuform, which has won a slew of prizes – including product of the year at the Dutch Design Awards. 
As we’ll hear, the product has a bit of history and is a piece that perhaps points the way forward for the furniture industry. 
In this episode we about about: splitting her time between two countries; being a ‘critical’ designer; working with recycled plastic; the history of her award-winning chair Rex and how it’s breaking new ground; why her parents didn’t want her to go to art school; giving up sculpture for design; moving to London in the ’90s; not being part of Droog; and her fascination with furniture.
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Darren Appiagyei is a wood turner and founder of inthegrain. The Camberwell College of Arts graduate made his name with vessels fashioned from the Banksia nut. Subsequently, he has gone on to create pieces from waste wood he finds on a local farm not far from his studio in London’s Deptford.  
He believes his work is ‘about embracing the intrinsic beauty of the wood; be it a crack, texture, knots or lack of symmetry’, adding that ‘it’s about allowing the wood to speak for itself and enabling the inner beauty of the wood to shine’.
His pieces have been included in shows such as 300 Objects during London Craft Week in 2020, Salon Art + Design at Park Avenue Armory in New York, and he had his first solo show at the Garden Museum in 2021. He will also be exhibiting with The New Craftsmen at this year’s Collect fair which runs at Somerset House from 3-5 March 2023. 

Darren is definitely one to watch. 
In this episode we talk about: how table tennis played a vital role in his career; learning to turn as a student; discovering the Banksia nut by chance; how he ‘collaborates’ with wood; his Ghanaian heritage; dealing with his mother’s mental health issues as a child; why wood became a form of therapy; and writing his memoir.
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Summer Islam is a founding director of Material Cultures, a not-for-profit organisation that in its own words ‘challenges the systems, technologies, processes, supply chains, regulations and materials that make up the construction industry with the aim of transforming the way we build’.
Currently, Summer has an installation in London’s Building Centre, along with her partners, Paloma Gormley and George Massoud. Homegrown: Building a Post-Carbon Future is notable for the large straw and timber structure at its heart. The trio has also published a new pocket-sized book, Material Reform, that attempts to set out the way we should build in the future, examining the ‘technification’ of architecture, our reliance on extractive processes, and investigating how we should build with biomaterials. 
It’s a fascinating, far reaching, read. 
In this episode we talk about: the philosophy behind Material Cultures; the problems with the construction industry and why it needs to change; being a ‘reformist’ rather than a ‘revolutionary’; disagreeing with Norman Foster on concrete; how biomaterials can simplify the way we build; factories as places of experimentation; the importance of repair; architects’ ‘arrogant’ use of timber; why straw is vital to our future; and putting Material Cultures’ ideas into practice. 
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Keith Brymer Jones is a potter, whose hand-made ceramics – which include the best selling Word Range – have been stocked in major stores, including Habitat, Laura Ashley and Heals. 
Over the years, he has been a ballet dancer, a front man in a nearly famous post-punk band, and a YouTube sensation. However, he is best known as a judge on the hugely popular The Great Pottery Throwdown, which is currently showing on Channel 4. 
His warm, and often confessional, autobiography Boy in a China Shop, is just out in paperback. It tells the story of a life that has seen him bullied at school, be attacked by a lion, and raise the roof at the Marquee Club. 
However, the thread that holds his story together is clay. 
In this episode we talk about: how it feels to throw a pot; discovering clay at school; how dyslexia shaped his career; auditioning for the Royal Ballet School; his relationship with his parents; drawing inspiration from Lucie Rie and Isaac Button; getting beaten up as a New Romantic; singing in a (nearly famous) band and getting played on Radio One; making pots in China; and becoming a TV star.
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Peter Apps is a journalist and author, as well as the deputy editor of Inside Housing. His extraordinary, devastating new book, Show Me The Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen, looks at the evidence of the public enquiry into the circumstances leading up to, and surrounding, the fire at London’s Grenfell Tower on the night of 14 June 2017. 
Unpicking evidence heard over the course of 300 public hearings and 1600 witness statements, he paints a deeply disturbing picture of the historical, systemic, and practical failures that took the lives of 72 people, telling personal, tragic stories with a deep sense of empathy combined with journalistic rigour. 
Show Me The Bodies also shows in stark detail why materials – and the stuff that literally surrounds us and is usually specified for us – really do matter.
In this episode Apps illustrates: how combustible materials came to be wrapped around a 24 storey building; the relationship between big business and government; the role the Cameron administration’s austerity policy played in denuding vital services; and the mistakes that were made on the evening itself. He also asks how important the issues of class and race were to the disaster and describes Grenfell's  shocking aftermath. 
This isn’t an easy listen but it is vital.
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