The Materials Library is a collection of some of the most wondrous materials on earth, gathered from sheds, kitchens, workshops, labs and factories around the world. Our shelves, cabinets and drawers are bursting at the seams with lumps, chunks and jars full of stiff, gloopy, shiny and nanoscopic stuff.
This collection puts familiar, everyday materials from our homes, studios and supermarkets on an equal footing with their more unusual counterparts - from research laboratories to high-tech manufacturing facilities - exploring the fascinating stories behind both the mundane and the mysterious.
The Materials Library is first and foremost a handling collection that emphasises the importance of sensory experience in learning about materials, their properties and their possibilities. You are encouraged to get hands-on and wobble, smear, scrape and sniff your way around the collection.
Our Materials Library is more than a simple collection of swatches: we have spent the last fifteen years developing an array of specially-made isomorphic ‘material-object’ sets that move beyond the swatch. Each set takes a recognisable form (like a cube, tuning fork, bell or spoon), and each object in the set is made from different materials. The individual objects in the set can vary wildly as a result of their material properties. These sets have allowed us to conduct systematic research, exploring the relationship between form, function and materiality.
The Materials Library is also a place that celebrates pure curiosity; encouraging play and experimentation with materials, as well as more formal research and teaching. As a result, we pride ourselves on our numerous ‘failed’ and ‘prototype’ materials, alongside those that are fully formed and ready to be specified.
