Shoreditch Design Week: Material Matters 2026
Dates | Tuesday 15 – Thursday 17 September 2026
Venue | UNLOCKED Shoreditch, 118 Curtain Road London EC2A 3PJ
This year will mark ARCHITEXTURES inaugural participation in Material Matters, the cross-media platform promoting material intelligence in architecture and design. Material Matters is an annual gathering of innovators, designers and manufacturers which launched in 2021, on our first birthday.
This year, Material Matters co-founders Grant Gibson and William Knight have situated the event in a new home; a former industrial warehouse on Curtain Road; UNLOCKED Shoreditch. Opening in the heart of Shoreditch Design Week – the most significant district within the annual London Design Festival - Material Matters fifth edition convenes a collection of over 50 exhibitors, selected by the founders for ‘their commitment to material intelligence’.
For Material Matters, we’ll be shining a celebratory light on the rich materials world created by Stories; our award-winning online materials magazine. Stories explores the role of materials in contemporary design and architecture, with each article featuring interviews with leading practitioners alongside global projects showcasing innovative and beautiful material use.
We’ll be sharing our beautifully captured series of short documentary films, Materials in Motion, celebrating the designers and makers behind some of our favourite materials. Our Materials in Motion films allow the audience at Material Matters a window into the world of innovative small-scale Scottish creators with big ambitions. The films lovingly detail work by Mirrl, a workshop creating dazzling bespoke resin finishes, Tiny Temple, Scotland's only Shou Sugi Ban maker, and No Rules Wallpaper, purveyors of wallpapers that behave more like materials than decorative finishes, allowing patterns to be composed intuitively.
Material Matters have consistently championed material innovation and the 2026 iteration is no different. A highlight promises to be FRONT® and biotech company Biomason who are exhibiting together to unveil Mimmik Tile™– a floor and wall tile that grows with the help of bacteria. The technology uses bacteria to bind carbon and calcium into a biologically formed marble-like material in a process that takes just two days. Now produced on an industrial scale, the Mimmik Tile™was inspired by coral, one of nature’s most durable structures. You can find the Mimmik Tile™ on the ARCHITEXTURES platform as well as a range of their industry changing WasteBasedBricks.
Friends of ARCHITEXTURES, Kenoteq, are back at Material Matters in 2026, presenting their innovative ultra-low carbon bricks made from recycled waste. The Scottish startup is reimagining the brick by creating a climate conscious circular ecosystem. Their K-Briq aims to play a pivotal part in the transition to a low carbon future as a product that requires minimal changes to existing construction methods. The K-Briq is now increasingly getting specified for projects that are proving both sustainable and beautiful.
Materials Matters offers visitors the joy of a whistle-stop-tour of global materials innovation. This year’s participants include The Or Foundation, based in Ghana, who upcycles and remanufactures fashion’s global waste. Dutch studio Stoksel presents the world premiere of a table conceived especially for the fair, showcasing its pioneering use of vitreous enamel on stainless steel. Informed by Mongolian nomadic lifeways, Steppe presents new prototypes for multispecies life in urban homes including Spoor, a digestible plant-based interface that lets animals express wellbeing preferences through instinctive choices.
Material Matters gives a glimpse into the future of the material world, exploring how technology is shaping the world of craft. Pickup Architecture’s exhibition Hand Code Matter for Matrix Design shows the work of eight recent graduates who consider how technologies are reshaping the future of architecture and interior design, while not losing sight of human creativity.
Always a highlight of Material Matters is the Wood Awards, the UK’s foremost competition for architecture and product design in wood. The Wood Awards will showcase the shortlisted Furniture & Objects projects, from one-off designs and production pieces to student work, alongside displays of shortlisted buildings and structures from across the UK. The Awards are a celebration of craft, care and materiality, and offer a welcome chance to pause and immerse yourself in an exemplary collection of architecture and design at its finest.
At ARCHITEXTURES, we’re proud of enabling our growing global community of over half a million architects and designers to source and download real materials for a real-life application. We are also overjoyed to be at Material Matters in the physical world, sharing our passion for materials. We’d love to see you there. Find us at booth GF-6!
Nearest stations | Shoreditch High Street, Old Street, Liverpool Street
Registration | Free to Attend | Register
