All stories

Vanessa Norwood spoke to ORCA founder Molly Sedlacek about the company’s origins and ethos.

When architect Jonathan Mizzi took his young family to the Green School in Bali he wasn’t planning on building there. Feeling despondent at the rate of development in his birthplace of Malta where growth was coming at the cost of history, Jonathan needed a change of pace.

Demolition debris, olive pits, spent coffee grounds, and fruit husks become starting points for new, durable products. Forward-thinking companies are asking: what overlooked abundance lies in the piles that others discard?

Set against the historic backdrop of Clerkenwell Green, the striking vaulted hyperbolic arches of Brick from a Stone: Arch Revival Pavilion formed an elegant centrepiece to the 2025 edition of Clerkenwell Design Week.

Architextures celebrated a journey that has seen the site grow to become one of the world’s largest digital materials libraries, with a community of over 500,000 architects and designers using the platform to find, create, download and edit materials.

Today clay is experiencing a remarkable renaissance, establishing itself as an important part of the sustainable materials palette. This revival owes a great deal to Clayworks, the Cornwall-based company redefining the use of clay in contemporary design.

Thick stone walls, dense timber frames filled with straw, and packed-earth structures held in warmth through winter and repelled heat in the summer. These materials, raw, organic and local, were not chosen for their insulating properties alone but for their abundance and endurance.

“People love stone” says Gavin Johnston, founder of Stone Curators. He should know, his opinion is one based on years of working with likeminded and appreciative clients who have tasked Gavin with finding exactly the right stone for their projects.

At ARCHITEXTURES, we’re dedicated to sharing our love of materials to bring our growing community of architects and designers the innovative, contemporary materials changing the way we construct our built environment.

Challenging current linear practices from extraction, to construction, to waste, Scottish startup Kenoteq is reimagining the brick by creating a climate conscious circular ecosystem.

In 2008, when Cuban American illustrator turned entrepreneur Katie Deedy founded wallpaper company Grow House Grow, the world had turned grey. Collectively, we were covering our walls in monochromatic colours. Katie was about to change all that

One evening, Simon was set to cook his hosts dinner. He opened a cutlery drawer to discover a pair of chopsticks. The chopsticks were unlike anything he’d seen before. Simon had discovered Tsugaru Nuri, a three-hundred-year-old Japanese lacquerware technique.