Hosted at STEAMhouse this event is open to all!
Join us for a talk and conversation with Blast Studio, the biological laboratory of architecture & sensitive technology.
Blast Studio, are a design studio created in 2018 by Paola Garnousset, Martin Detoeuf and Pierre de Pingon with the aim to explore how nature and technology can be put in dialogue in order to transform cities’ discarded material into new forms.
The studio sees the city as an open-air quarry where waste is a resource material, and has developed methods to transform urban waste – including cardboard waste, sawdust, and other discarded materials – into a biomaterial that can be 3D printed at scale, to produce furniture, artefacts, and architecture.
Their work has been exhibited across the UK, France, the Netherlands and South Korea. In 2020, they won the Prix d’Encouragement in Architecture from the French Académie des Beaux Arts. In 2022, they were awarded the New Talent Award at Surface Design Show and they are finalist for the Loewe Craft Prize 2022.
Materials Club has grown out of the Create Programme at STEAMhouse, and has been active as a community-led research group in Birmingham since 2019. Now in its third year, it has become a creative research space exploring questions related to our ecological future through deep material practices.
We support and cultivate projects that look to use materials in new, different, and sustaining ways. This includes working with waste, nature, and within the values of circular design. We encourage collaboration and open conversation allowing new knowledge to be shared and developed collectively. This is a space to be inspired, learn, engage, and become part of a growing community.
Our monthly Materials Club Talks invite practitioners to share new and interesting materials practices. Each month a different STEAMhouse member invites a guest to share their materials practice. Their presentation is followed by an in-conversation and open discussion that delves deeper into their personal values and motivations for their work, with a focus on materiality and our current global context. This month’s guest has been invited by STEAMhouse member Kaitlin Ferguson.
Where is this event?
This event will be held in person at the new STEAMhouse building on Cardigan St. in Birmingham. You are invited to join us from 5.30pm for light refreshments and a community social – the talk will begin at 6pm, followed by an informal conversation facilitated by our evening’s co-host artist Kaitlin Ferguson.
Presented as part of the STEAMhouse Create Programme.
STEAMhouse is a space to experiment, test and develop new knowledge. At the project’s heart are five key principles – conversation, exploration, collaboration, openness and newness. The STEAMhouse Create Programme is a free ERDF funded programme that supports resource-poor businesses to build digital skills and make their new product, project, or service ideas a reality.
Open since early 2018, STEAMhouse is powered by Birmingham City University, in partnership with Eastside Projects, and funded by the European Regional Development Fund. The STEAMhouse Create Programme supports businesses, including self-employed, sole-trading artists, to test new ideas, prototype and make new products and services (which if you are an artist may be artworks) as well as explore the potential of digital technologies to help you collaborate and innovate.
Find out more HERE
