About
About
Our research is shaped by a broad, multidisciplinary community of makers, thinkers, and doers. We bring together people from all sorts of backgrounds - designers, engineers, artists, scientists, technicians, craftspeople, members of the public, and those who simply love to tinker. We believe materials and making expertise comes in many forms. Whether a personal experiment with a single material or a multimillion-pound collaboration, our projects are led by curiosity, enthusiasm, and the belief that everyone has something valuable to contribute.
What We Explore
We are materials and making agnostic: metal, microbes, mud, textiles, plastics, pigments, ceramics, code. If it can be shaped, transformed, or reimagined, we're interested. Our research happens through making. The objects, prototypes, and material artefacts that emerge are research outcomes in their own right. By engaging with materials directly in a hands-on way, we deepen understanding and open up new possibilities for investigating the made world and the material systems that shape it.
How We Work
Our approach is joyful, playful, and rigorous. We learn by experimenting, exploring, and sometimes getting things delightfully wrong. We take seriously a broad church of things: the mundane, the extraordinary, the overlooked, and the spectacular. Projects are intriguing, inventive, and often unusual, yet hopefully accessible. We favour open and participatory working approaches, convening a wide range of research partners to carry out research that really matters.
Why It Matters
We use materials and making as lenses to tackle real-world challenges. Many of our projects are developed alongside industry partners, policymakers, communities, and cultural organisations. By interrogating how humans and materials interact (past, present, future) and their material systems, we uncover insights that shape innovation, sustainability, and everyday life. Our research leads to personal transformation, materials breakthrough, societal impact, and policy change, all while staying grounded in current and pressing issues. In short, we explore the made world so we can understand it better and reshape it together.