Stories

When we think of innovation, it’s often the stuff of far-off futures. But innovation can also be rooted in the past – a revisitation of old methods and the most fundamental of components fused with future learnings. Or, future materials in the case of these three MA Material Futures students. And though their sights are set firmly on “tomorrow”, their lofty future imaginings all tell a story that connects us, both emotionally and physically, with our past.



Jesse Adler’s quest for colour is a return to simpler times before mainstream colourants made from fossil fuels became the norm. Discovering that mushrooms and lichens produce colour naturally and have done so without ceremony for over 250 million years, Jesse has found a way to recreate the CMYK palette with natural hues so vivid, they appear synthetic.

There’s something so primal and yet futuristic about her work. That, and the simple wonder that whilst we’ve been honing our synthetic (and to that point toxic) colours for years, all the while microorganisms have been carrying about their business quietly, but oh-so vividly for eons. To look upon her work is to look upon theirs, and in doing so, to travel back in time.

Partnered with ever-sustainable designer Rejina Pyo, Jesse’s colours are brought into the real-world and onto the catwalk, a tangible expression of how nature’s ancient ways can inspire us all.



Of all our senses, scent is the most primal, capable of tapping directly into our emotions and triggering thoughts and memories at a single sniff. Fitting then that Tetsuo Lin has turned to DNA, the very building blocks of life, to create a range of synthetic lab-grown scents. The idea was conceptualised with the help of designers, strategists, and writers from Here, and brought to life in partnership with skincare brand Haeckels. What makes this work so ground-breaking is that lab-grown scents require no essential oils or physical flora, thereby cutting out the mass-scale cultivation required of mainstream fragrance production and raising important questions about how we consume resources.

As the finite resources required for mass-produced glassmaking are called into question, the sustainable reputation of the material has become far from crystal clear. Inspired by ancient methodologies, Lulu Harrison found that all you need to create an eco-friendly version is sand, water and shells. Things you can find on the shores of the Thames. Her work brings together local and waste materials including invasive quagga mussels that block up Thames Water’s Transfer tunnels and usually head straight to landfill.

The natural minerals in these materials cause a variation in colour and clarity, tinging it a beautiful blue, so that each iteration of what she calls Thames Glass is not just tied to place, but to a time too. In doing so, Lulu has done the impossible, seemingly capturing time in a bottle.

As more and more architects shy away from glass, the award-winning founders of Bureau de Change saw opportunity in creating sustainable tiles made from Lulu’s Thames Glass. The intricate patterns are modeled on terracotta chimney pots designed by Royal Daulton, who, in a wonderfully cyclical turn of events, were also responsible for improving the city’s sanitation system in the 1870s. A full circle water cycle indeed.



It’s worth noting that these three iterations of innovation are merely at the beginning of their respective cycles. Who knows where they’ll lead? As we work in a time of climate crisis towards an ever more uncertain future, we are armed with only what has come before and the imagination to change what comes next.



Calling into question processes in 3 major industries, this work is a clarion call for more bio-pioneers that hold a deep reverence for the elemental. Because in uncertain times, it’s imperative that today’s forward thinkers look backwards too.

What set you on the path to becoming an artist and, more specifically, a maker?

– I grew up in a house where we made everything we needed – and it was part of our joy. My mother was a seamstress and my father was an electrician who built half our house. I went out into the world feeling I could build my own world within it. That brilliant naivety helped me create a relationship with things I felt needed elevating or given a voice.



You primarily give voice through clay. Why this particular material?

– I ask myself the same question every day. I think it’s the relationship. Clay isn’t just clay. It’s a communicator. Bone china, terracotta, stonewear; they speak to us in different ways. If you use a porcelain cup, you drink differently, pour differently, than, say, an American diner mug. Clay constantly echoes our humanness. It’s everyone’s material and gives us access to different conversations. We ask a lot of it, but we learn things from its responses.



That’s interesting. Clay is something natural and solid yet it’s so responsive to the human touch.

– It’s also humbling. Clay fails all the time. Ceramists, glassmakers, weavers – we’re all humbled by our materials. But that’s crafting. That’s the meditation of practice. You’re never going to arrive, you just get moments of success.



We worked together on a project for the RNOH charity, creating 2,000 ceramic buttercups to raise money for the hospital. During our initial research, we found this lovely story about children picking buttercups and selling them to raise funds for the hospital back in the thirties. We knew what we wanted to create, but we didn’t quite know how. So we got on the phone to you…

– And I’m glad you did. For me, the story was about hope. This idea of picking buttercups and carefully carrying them across London to sell for others. It’s an impossible thing, and I like impossible things. Each piece represents the children’s hope and resilience. We’re carrying those little voices into another era so they can perform again.

You often work with large groups to create your artworks. Why do you choose to involve so many people?

– Impressive scale requires people. We can do more together than we can alone, in all aspects of life. It creates community too. With the buttercups, I hope everyone who buys one feels part of a group. That’s the reason many of my artworks are dispersed. I want them to become nudges in our lives, reminders of our experiences. For me, objects hold memories in a way photos can’t.



Monument, your piece in the Paris Museum of Modern Art, is a breathtaking mountain of broken china. Much like the buttercups, individually the pieces look fragile, but together they’re imposing and strong. How did this piece of work come about?

– It’s about stepping into the industrial process – and the skills and humanity that abound in places like Wedgwood, Royal Crown Derby and Portmeirion. I take their broken china. These beautiful objects with no home that still represent the history of their time.



When we first showed the piece 10 years ago, it was talking about the preciousness of objects and the fragility of history. It was a monument to the failed things in the world. Now, I see it as a representation of our environment.

– It stands at the entrance of the museum so people walk in and see this big, glittery pile of broken china. It’s quite terrifying at first because it reminds you of every single thing you’ve broken. Then, you look closer, and it becomes a miracle. Look at all this! How did it get here? There’s a magic at play.



What draws you to working at huge scales?

– I need to say things in an ambitious way to take other people’s hopes and voices with me. The massive sculptures represent my ambition too. I want to make incredible work that captures people. I’m an artist of my time. I was lucky to arrive when the Royal Academy was putting on incredible installation shows. They told me more was possible.



Thank you Clare, it’s been a pleasure talking with you.



Link to RNOH project.



You can buy your own RNOH ceramic buttercup here.

Raffaella walks us through a selection of her creations. Each requires perseverance, imagination and a dash of daring. Yet, to me, one stands out. It’s a chocolate bar, yes. But it’s also an elegant slab of Carrara marble. To achieve this, Raffaella and her business partner Kia Utzon-Frank looked to the Japanese art of sashiko. They broke a white bar and ‘glued’ it back together with coloured black chocolate. They did this again. And again. Nine times later, they had the desired effect: a tile of chocolate almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

This experimentation with process is central to the Brik ethos. As Raffaella explains, ‘sometimes you don’t know what the making will involve until you begin. The process appears through your body while your mind struggles to catch up’. It’s a commitment to intuition, a freedom to explore, that has helped return a sense of wonder to the world of chocolate. ‘We wanted to help people rediscover their favourite treat. By incorporating unfamiliar materials like terrazzo, marble and concrete, we help people reframe their perceptions so everyone can discover chocolate again, as if for the first time.’

This way of thinking is also the starting point for many of Brik’s commercial projects. ‘A lot of clients initially ask for a bar with their logo on it.’ Instead, their invited into the kitchen and treated to a tasting. ‘We undress their preconceptions of what chocolate should be’, Raffaella says, ‘We say, no, your logo will be eaten. It will disappear. Instead we want to convert your brand into a flavour, a colour, an edible experience.’

As our talk draws to a close, Raffaella emphasises the importance of appreciating the time and effort involved in each bar. ‘We’re losing touch with the essence of production. We must always remember the craft and time that goes into making the goods we buy.’


She needn’t worry with this crowd. We’re all intent on savouring every last bite.

How did your career come into bloom Jinny?

– It’s a hobby that got out of hand. I was originally a psychologist and psychotherapist working at the sticky end of mental health. It might sound unrelated, but it isn’t. I quickly realised my patients benefited greatly from being outside and in touch with nature.

I’d always loved messing about with plants and I could feel something growing inside me: I wanted to try being a landscaper. So, I stopped being a psychotherapist on Friday and started doing this on Monday – with zero training. I’ve since found that if you get up early every day, work hard, and try not to think too much, it eventually comes together.



It’s certainly worked for you. I think sometimes it’s helpful going into something a little naive. You’re not weighed down by what other people say is possible.

– It can push you. Of course, it does make one’s life harder. But fear is a great motivator. I had a mortgage to pay so, I felt, Christ, I better get the hang of this. Now, over 20 years later, I have a team of 14 at my studio. It’s a big practice, but I still design everything.



You recently designed the Sky Garden at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Does it feel like you’ve come full circle?

– I never let go of health. I’ve been the artist in residence at the hospital for a number of years. We did lots of research into the effect of art on patient health – and landscaping scores particularly well.

I’ve designed two gardens for the hospital now, with the latest for the ICU. We use soft colours, textural objects and plants that clean the air. Before, people were being killed by stress, like animals who suffer trauma. The gardens help bring them back to health. We’re all just little animals really.



All design changes through time but, in your role, you’re creating something which will mature over decades. That’s fascinating to us…

– Yes, our commitment needs to be very long term. If you’re planting a tree, you want it to be there in 100 years. That said, we live in a time of bulldozers. People want to plant their own expression. It’s something I find philosophically interesting and disturbing. We all believe we have greater authority over the earth than those who came before.

If you think back to our folk songs, oaks feature prominently. They’re the mighty oak, the anchor point. Yet, with global warming, we may soon not have any left. We’re literally losing our narrative thread. Landscaping can help us refind it, so the consideration is deep. This is why, weirdly, I don’t care so much about flowers. They’re ephemeral. It’s the structure, the trees, which will last.

There are movements afoot to get us back to nature, like rewilding. Does this give you hope?

– I’m controversial. I’m not sure about rewilding. I think it signifies our hubris. If you leave the world alone, it’s fine isn’t it? It doesn’t need us to rewild it. I think, if you’re a landowner and you want to ‘rewild’ it, that’s fairly egocentric. Instead, I see us as husbandmen. If you have the luxury of land, look after it.



In your book, you talk about thinking, sensing, harmonising, liberating... All these wonderful words. Could you tell us more about your creative practice?

– I wanted the book to be a practical guide to landscaping. This starts with thinking and looking. I was brought up with the mantra: think before you act. So, there’s a lot of thinking. I wander and talk to people, especially if I’m working in another culture.

I’m not a great sketcher either, so I take a lot of notes. I’ve got hundreds of little Moleskins, all stacked up and numbered.



Do you feel words can capture a garden better than, say, a photograph?

– Absolutely. A garden is a performance. Garden photography can be challenging, which is why it was so nice to work with Here. When it came to the writing, I went back to the William Morris approach. Each piece of text had a different role. Each gave a different narrative thrust.



It’s interesting you mention William Morris. We’re really connected to the arts and craft movement, particularly the idea of fusing beauty and usefulness – and the power of natural materials. Do you feel close to it too?

– Oh, definitely. I’m a bit appalled we haven’t come up with anything as good since. It really is the most articulate design movement.

My world is all about natural materials too. It’s very elemental: stone, wood, metal, water, earth in all its glory. That’s my positive thought really. That everything on earth is from the earth. While we’re busy wrecking it with fossil fuels and plastics, I do wonder whether it’ll actually be OK – because it all comes from here.



It’s a positive thought. Talking of the future, are there any projects you’re excited to see come to fruition?

– Just all of them. I’ve been on site today and had to get scrubbed up quickly to come here. We’re working on a fully artificial landscape in the middle of Grosvenor Square – but it feels completely natural. It’s a reimagined Venetian palazzo, not the usual clipped, manicured stuff you usually see between posh London homes. It’s wild, a little crazy, and I love it.



Thank you Jinny. It’s been a pleasure as always.



Link to Here’s work with Jinny.

Between the 11th and 13th of May, in The Academy Rooms on Brook Street in Mayfair the exhibition will showcase the material innovations across three main exhibits.


Thames Glass: Lulu Harrison x Thames Water x Bureau de Change

Quagga mussels are an invasive non-native species in the UK that cause blockages in Thames Water's transfer tunnels and are costly to remove, usually ending up in landfill. Supported by Thames Water, student Lulu Harrison has created a sustainable eco-glass unique to London and formed from the shells of this natural but nuisance by-product from the Thames.

Colour Cultures: Jesse Adler x Rejina Pyo

Colour remains one of the most under-innovated areas in fashion sustainability. According to student Jesse Adler, colour cultivated from fungi like mushrooms, lichen and mould can be a safer and healthier alternative to synthetic colourants, and more scalable and economically viable than natural dyes. In collaboration with Adler and Here, London based fashion designer Rejina Pyo will demonstrate with a visual and immersive experience how these colours could make it onto the runways of the future.

Lab Grown Scent for a Sustainable Future: Tetsuo Lin x Haeckels

Student Tetsuo Lin will be joining forces with skincare and fragrance brand Haeckels. Lin and Haeckels are developing the idea of lab grown scent by synthetically producing it from DNA. By engineering scents in this way, the unnecessary waste and damaging of ecosystems through usage of natural materials in the beauty industry can be addressed.

Luxury brands have reflected this ultimate desire and grounded themselves in the essence of things, in the definition and discovery of truth itself.

They focus on ultimate materiality and material forms. They use the most authentic and heritage materials, as well as the most revolutionary and innovative ones. Take Burberry — a company founded on the principle that clothing should be designed to protect people from the British weather. In 1879, they invented gabardine, a breathable, waterproof, and hardwearing fabric that revolutionized outdoor wear. This April, they launched a curated ReBurberry Edit crafted in an innovative nylon yarn made from regenerated fishing nets and fabric scraps. In the past, Burberry has looked to the sculptures of Henry Moore to find the most vital, arresting, and human forms.

Artisan makers work closely with the essence of a material, they know it better than anyone else, they are closest to its truth. Their making is a real investment of time and skill captured in an object. Luxury brands foreground work done by hand — an activity that feels fundamental to what it means to be human.

Hermès is an exemplary storyteller of this kind and holds tightly onto the reins of its Parisian equestrian origins. Its film series ‘Footsteps Across the World’ shares portraits of saddler-leather workers in Paris and silk-marbling artisans in Kyoto. Luxury brands root themselves in time and place. This series reflects the brand’s commitment to the very best materials and its dedication to traditional and rare crafts, to keeping knowledge transmitted from generation to generation alive and relevant for a modern audience.

Alessandro Michele’s infinite creativity has made Gucci one of the most sought-after brands. But we mustn’t forget that this vision is built atop Gucci’s long-standing reputation for Italian craftsmanship, a pinnacle of quality and attention to detail. This is visible in their ornate bag closures and horse-bit loafer details that Michele has eclectically redesigned in forms such as tiger heads and shearling linings.

Luxury brands continue to search for the ultimate material forms, the tactile and tangible. Things that we can know and literally hold onto.

Alongside materiality, truth needs words — powerful, authoritative, and original definitions of what is. Luxury gets to define quality, luxury names it. It gets to point at something and call it luxury. Words cut to the essence of the thing and give it a name.

This is why naming is such an art in luxury brands: naming that bag, that perfume, that material, that color. Luxury brands are obsessed with this act of definition, of finding words that ring true to the essence of the object.

When Gabrielle Chanel created Chanel No.5, it was revolutionary, the first of its kind in scent, bottle, and name. It was named after the fifth sample given to her by the Tsar’s perfumer. An innovation for the time, it involved the use of aldehydes and offered complexity when most perfumes were single-note floral scents. The radical difference in christening the perfume No.5 helped name the difference and, of course, became iconic.

Byredo redefines ‘Pulp’ as a luxury name, speaking to the intensely evocative nature of the scent. Gucci promises decadence in a mascara that builds and builds. It selects charm and mystery as the thing this mascara should be about and names it ‘L’Obscur’. Authenticity matters and an original, skilled wordsmith is integral to creating luxury brands.

We might think it easy to pledge allegiance to ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’. But not many can. Truth is the domain of luxury because only in luxury is the focus on the truth, in and of itself. In the mass-market, brands have to elevate a functional or material truth by association with an emotional one — the brand is created to enshrine this association. Luxury is different in that it is anchored in the definition, invention, or discovery of truth itself.

What differentiates luxury is the audacity of their commitment to a vision. They don’t compromise.

Although we tend to think of the truth as setting things in stone, in luxury the truth animates. ‘The truth will set us free’. An absolute commitment to the essentials, to establishing material truth and defining the essence of what matters, earns us the freedom to dream, and, if we desire, to be outrageous.

So, when Gucci is hyper-referential and surreal — releasing a Spring Summer 2020 campaign starring horses in absurd scenarios in Los Angeles — we believe in the fantasy because its luxury is rooted in so much truth.

This article originally appeared in Branding Mag

At Here, we have always been advocates for the importance of tangible physical experiences as a counterpoint to our our digital existence - time spent looking at screens - and in the last few weeks this dynamic has gone into hyperdrive. Assuming we will continue to use remote-working technologies, the studio should more assertively become a creative stimulant - or more than that, a space designed for digital decompression. An experience that Thomas Heatherwick calls "Hyper Physical" in an article about the future of office design.

So, more than ever, the studio needs to be a space that uplifts us with its design and beauty—that justifies its existence by enriching our lives. A space that celebrates spontaneous conversation untainted by digital glitches and encourages more nuanced human communication like "the subtle affirmations of our humanity" that Cal Newport talks about in his New Yorker article "Why Remote Work Is So Hard—and How It Can Be Fixed." It needs to be a generous and safe space that encourages disruptive and spontaneous creative work with the analogue tools that will differentiate and rebalance us from our time spent in pixels: books, pens, paints, inks, paper and jokes. In many ways this new model relates back to a very old model - something much more like the idealistic art college experience.

And why not open this experience up to the clients we work with? With fewer people in the studio at any given time, as restrictions are relaxed it could become possible to dedicate more space to productive collaborative work with our clients in our studio.

One clear observation from this experience is that it has suited some people more than others - the introverts among us are seemingly flourishing in isolation - and in many ways this is a moment where ideas of self-realisation begin to translate to our choices about how to work. We are being taught to understand when we get the most out of focused work at home and when we will get more out of communal work at the studio.

It strikes us that this is a lesson that will be hard to unlearn and step back from, and as a consequence, we can safely assume that the role of the studio will never quite be the same again. Stripped of the more methodical aspects of work, it could actually become much more exciting.

This article originally appeared in Muse By Clio

He’s not alone. For countless independent Luxury brands with environmental consciousness built-in, smaller and more sustainably produced collections have long been the reality. Due to the extended pause on production for much of 2020, this autumn, some brands are selling a very limited number of items including archival pieces. Irish-based 31 Chapel Lane announced their discrete collection that “continues to build upon our established values of integrity, quality and sustainability”.

This notion that less is more goes hand-in-hand with the thought that creativity comes from constraint. Or, as Orson Welles put it, “the enemy of art is the absence of limitations”. This has been critical in powering thinking, particularly when it comes to inventing sustainable materials. Circular design is vital in preventing further environmental damage so a key focus has been on what can be produced purely from waste. Meet the new materials.

From well-known bioplastics to the wonderfully niche, new products are being fashioned from the most improbable materials. The ReBurberry Edit uses lightweight ECONYL® made from regenerated fishing nets, discarded fabric and industrial plastic, seamlessly fitting the urbane modern look of the brand. The Shellworks transforms the discarded shells of lobsters into a paper-like compostable material. Meanwhile, eco-packaging is finally popping up in Champagne - something to celebrate.

Haeckels, a beauty brand out of Margate, has been one of the recent success stories. Their environmentally friendly products and off-white mycelium packaging – a kind of living, breathing mushroom pulp, that can be grown, recycled and readily decomposes – have gained much attention, and are stocked today across many of London’s most iconic and curated stores. They’ve innovated not only products, but trialled a new way to shop, selecting a couple of days where no form of money was accepted in their Margate store: trialling the circular economy, watching how the day unfolded and the incredible interactions with their customers. Haeckles is one of the many small giants continuously innovating in this space, spurring on the conversation, and making sustainability eminently chic.

One of the crucial shifts we are seeing is a psychological one: making the old ultra-desirable. As a society we’ve long been sold the unblemished newness things. But this is changing, upcycling has come to New York, London and Paris. When Vogue Ukraine fashion director Julie Pelipas walked to a haute couture show in Paris in an extremely oversized men’s suit pinned with big bunches flapping at her sides, everyone around took note. It was a statement look promoting her new brand Better that sells vintage men’s suits altered to fit women’s bodies. Artist Rua Carlota’s unique patchwork knits made with deadstock fabrics have similarly been a social media hit and lionised in the press. Numerous brands have joined this wave of making things entirely from excess fabrics and materials, Acne Studio being one of the latest to announce its repurposed collection. Visually clothes are cut and spliced together, giving a heightened sense of visual resourcefulness, of difference. It’s a challenging aesthetic but challenger behaviour is exactly what we need. We have to be shocked, arrested and allured in.

Of course these innovations aren’t exclusively limited to Luxury, Adidas and Nike trainers are a spectacular playground for new biomaterial and tech innovations. But Luxury brands’ behaviour in this space is all important. It sets an aspirational agenda that is influential. Up to a point, Luxury gets to name and define what is valuable. Additionally, if eminent brands can afford to get behind new materials they can give them the economies of scale they need to get off the ground. As Alessandro Michele points out "now, more than ever, [it] is necessary to build new and more powerful narrations.” Today’s powerful story: old has to be the new new.