June news: architecture, agriculture, art and watermelons

The Glastonbury of the farming world, Groundswell is an annual forum for farmers, people interested in food production, and anyone who cares about the environment and regenerative practices.

For this year’s edition at Lannock Farm in Hertfordshire, Zetteler has curated a panel event on 3 July  that puts non-extractive materials and regenerative practice and the built environment into conversation, connecting the dots between farming and architecture for the first time in the festival’s history. 

Hosted by architectural historian Neal Shasore, the panel features Material Cultures co-director Paloma Gormley, Msoma Architects’ Bushra Mohamed, Tuckey Design Studio director Jonathan Tuckey, and Nathaniel Loxley, director of research at the British Hemp Alliance.

See the session and sign up

Purposeful and collaborative, Mitre & Mondays applies systems thinking to spatial design, creating regenerative, adaptable environments shaped by circular principles and social impact.

Freshly inducted into the Zetteler client list after years in our extended network, the London-based design studio and workshop was founded in 2019 by Finn Thomson and Josef Shanley-Jackson. Shaped by a belief in the power of material storytelling, its distinctive portfolio – including work with the likes of IKEA, the British Library and Faber Futures – is packed with spaces, objects and environments that explore how we live now, and how we could live better. 

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Spaces like the Wolves Lane Centre are the beating heart of London. A horticultural centre and community food growing hub, its mission is to make good food accessible to all.

A recent collaboration between Material Cultures and Studio Gil has transformed the site from a semi-derelict plant nursery into a thriving, climate-resilient community resource – hosting the likes of Black-led CIC the Ubele Initiative, growing collective Black Rootz and OrganicLea, a local workers’ cooperative.

This project is an exemplar of participatory design and construction, as well as showcasing bio-regional and low-carbon materials. The result: three new low-carbon buildings constructed from a palette of natural materials that can be easily maintained and adapted, sequestering rather than generating carbon. “The project is a living example of how bio-regional materials can be applied to an urban site,” says Material Cultures’ director Paloma Gormley.

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An interior architecture collaboration between Wet Studio and Dan Pope’s Studio Popelo,La Camionera's newly opened Broadway Market haunt is a contemporary lesbian bar with a retro Spanish touch. Design and construction were intentionally queer-led from the start. All involved – designers, contractors, artists and makers – came from within the community, bringing a shared sense of purpose that makes the space, as Wet Studio’s Clodagh Farrelly put it, ‘a love letter to the lesbian community.’

A welcoming and convivial space with distinctive raw-material textures, the bar draws inspiration from Madrid’s bar culture, refracted through a queer lens.  Co-owner Clara Solis’ hand-painted tiles nod to the myths where Greek gods disguising themselves as bulls to seduce women – a playful reference to the term ‘bulldyke’. The result is a softer, more fluid reimagining of Picasso’s Minotaur series that queers classical iconography.

Meet the Pope

Curated and produced by leading public art commissioning organisation, UP Projects, ‘Bodies of Water’ is an ambitious series of site-specific public art commissions – including the first UK commission for the German-Korean artist Anne Duk Hee Jordan. 

In a country beset by polluted rivers and wider environmental destruction, ‘Bodies of Water’ couldn’t be more timely and urgent – and now we can share the images of the newly installed work. 

One of two works that are unfolding across different locations in England, I travelled 66 million years to be with you and then you came is situated at the National Trust’s A la Ronde cottage in Exmouth. The sculptural work harvests, filters and circulates rainwater, and when its counterpart is installed in Wigan’s Haigh Hall in September, the works will track local temperature and rainfall at each location in real time.

UPlifting art

Artist Alex Booker’s recent exhibition Watermelons presented a new series of nine woodcut prints expressing solidarity with Palestine. Each piece is handprinted in an edition of 15 at his Hackney studio, using GF Smith Colorplan Mist (175gsm), kindly donated by the GF Smith team in support of the show. The four distinct colours of watermelons – red, green, white and black – echo the Palestinian flag, expressing opposition to genocide and the brutal occupation and censorship Palestinians continue to face. It has long been a symbol of resistance across Palestine.

If you missed the chance to see the works IRL at They Made This in Kings Cross, why not buy one for yourself or a friend now? 50% from all print sales is being donated to the Palestinian Health Workers Solidarity Fund. Support a local artist, show your solidarity with Palestine and get an original artwork – win, win, win.

BUY NOW: Prints for Palestine

The timber industry labels a piece of wood by size, number of knots, colour variation, and other factors – giving higher grades to ‘clear wood’.  At Material Matters on 18 June, AHEC’s new exhibition asks the world to rethink its view on timber, presenting a trio of furniture installations, all crafted at Benchmark from No.1 Common – a timber category typically dismissed as ‘cabinet grade’.

Featuring visionary designs from Andu Masebu, Daniel Schofield and Anna Maria Øfstedal Eng, and exhibition design from Kia Utzon-Frank, the exhibition celebrates the aesthetic, textural, and functional possibilities of an under-appreciated timber grade, and makes a compelling case for AHEC’s mantra: ‘use what nature provides’.

Into the woods