Paloma Gormley, Summer Islam and George Massoud discuss how the Hackney-based practice is radically rethinking its attitudes towards materials for a post-carbon future.
When you visit the Material Cultures’ website materialcultures.org you are greeted by a series of clips of materials in action: brown sludgy stuff being extracted, wood being processed, straw being grown, and various building elements being installed. This is the messy side of architecture; the side we seldom see, because most of the time it doesn’t make for great PR. It’s the resource-depleting, climate catastrophe-inducing nature of building writ large. Attempting to shine a light on this inconvenient and unpalatable truth, while also critically evaluating how to deal with it from an architectural perspective is London-based practice, Material Cultures. Spearheaded by founders Paloma Gormley and Summer Islam, as well as director George Massoud, Material Cultures was born from Practice Architecture and Studio Abroad, and like many other architects, makers and creative professionals from this part of the city, it is based in Hackney’s Regent Studios.
Strock block produced by HG Matthews. “Made from clay-rich earth and chopped straw, this air-dried block can be used for internal loadbearing walls up to three-storeys high. The blocks are bedded in thin clay mortar made from the same clay as the blocks, creating a homogenous earth wall.”
Why are you called Material Cultures?
Paloma Gormley The name talks to how the materials we use are not just artefacts of a society, but how they also shape it.
Summer Islam It’s a recurring theme: at industry events where everyone is talking around the houses about the supply chain, at the end they say, “it’s really about cultural change though, isn’t it?”
Paloma Gormley You can really see the manifestation of cultures, not just in what we conventionally see as cultural outputs, like institutional buildings, but in materials themselves. We’ve moved towards glass, steel and concrete; these finite materials that perhaps embody a patriarchal, masculine culture. The materials that have been left behind, which are potentially softer, simpler, more vulnerable and more adaptive, could be associated with feminine culture. So the notion of material cultures is legible at this level.
George Massoud We try to untangle the whole ecosystem around a material and the political economy that feeds it. That’s really interesting to us but also quite difficult to do. We’re always learning and endeavouring to understand how we can hold ourselves accountable for what materials we’re using and the impact they’re making. For example, we try to understand what thread leads to a window frame being specified.
Example of pigmented lime-based plaster and lime wash on wood wool board. “We were looking at different pigments for a housing development in Lewes, East Sussex, which we plan to build with hempcrete, and were wondering how this would look and feel.”
What brought you all together?
Paloma Gormley We’re all quite hands on, and I guess led by an interest in materials and how things fit together. I suppose you could say we’re underpinned by a particular rationale on the pragmatism around materials that is grounded in an agro-ecological set of ideas. We are also interested in systems and the culture change required to address those issues.
Summer Islam George and I were both undergraduates at the AA. Paloma and I met at London Met. We were teaching different postgraduate units there and bumped into each other at the end of the year exhibition.
Example of pigmented lime-based plaster and lime wash on wood wool board. Darker pigmentation, currently being used for the Wolves Lane Horticultural Centre in north London.
How often do you use your materials library?
Paloma Gormley It’s used constantly in the design process for conversations with clients, students and ourselves.
Where are the materials stored?
Summer Islam They’re always in circulation, which makes the rigour of a library something we dream of.
George Massoud We’re a small business based in London. In an ideal scenario, we’d have an entire room with big drawers, lighting and even maybe a testing area. But it’s one step at a time.
Paloma Gormley We do have project boxes though, mostly for live schemes.
Summer Islam We think of them as ‘live specification sets’. The client or consultant comes around, and we have a supermarket shopping crate that’s full of all the materials relating to that project. It’s important to get them out and handle them when you’re specifying and writing.
Expanded cork insulation board from Amorim. “The board provides good thermal and acoustic performance for walls and ceilings, and is free from synthetic resins, chemicals, and carcinogens.”
How do you bring stakeholders on board with new ways of working with materials?
Summer Islam Increasingly clients come to us because of the kind of work we do and the values we talk about. This means that the ground is already set. We find that it’s not necessarily the client, but other consultants we have to persuade a bit more, such as a cost consultant, who may be more inclined to suggest alternative materials.
George Massoud It’s really important that we avoid having isolated, siloed conversations. The framing and reframing of material and design choices is an important part of our job, and we’re constantly asking ourselves how we can have this dialogue with as many different people as possible. Otherwise, you end up having the same conversation with the same people, which isn’t productive.
Ash and clay-based plaster on wood wool board manufactured by Jeffrey Hart. “The material was part of the Waste Age exhibition at London’s Design Museum in 2021. A big part of the exhibition was creating alcoves within thick walls where we hung the artworks. These were made from different clay plasters.”
Where do you find the biggest gaps in material literacy?
Summer Islam Some of our research relates to supply chains across a potential bio-based sector/construction industry. What it showed was slightly depressing: at every stage there are big gaps in bio-based material literacy. Even the specification software we’ve used, such as NBS, doesn’t include some of these materials. Building standards don’t acknowledge them in some places, and the Building Regulations do not legislate in favour of them. There’s a lot that local authorities could be doing, including leveraging their own local plan. Ultimately, there is a lot of knowledge that just hasn’t percolated through yet.
At site management level, and senior management level within construction companies, material literacy is missing. Often, its because they aren’t invested or interested in the principles behind why you might build differently. But the people who take the materials away from construction sites are interested, because they’re invested in the ease of moving stuff and the value you get from recycling.
Hemp fibre and bio-resin board supplied by Margent Farm in Huntingdon. “This can be used for interior and exterior wall cladding, and we used it for the Flat House in Huntingdon.High cellulose content (60-70 per cent) makes the sheet strong and durable, while the fibres, sequester carbon. A sugar-based resin made from agricultural waste, including corn cob, oat hulls and bagasse, is used to bind the sheet together.”
What materials are you excited to use?
Summer Islam Thatch! That’s what the wall from this year’s ‘Homegrown’ exhibition at the Building Centre was made from. It explored how to work with thatch in safer ways and systems that can be scaled quite quickly.
George Massoud We are developing a prefabricated vertical straw cladding system to use on a house for a farmer and their family. We’ve been looking at dipping the panels in clay to mitigate fire risk – this is still being tested.
Summer Islam Every straw project we’ve ever talked through with anyone raises questions on pests and fire. There is a misconception that certain materials attract rodents. Actually, mice will go anywhere if there’s a little gap and it’s nice and warm. You can get mice in concrete buildings. There are also cultural associations at play. You think of a straw house and you might remember The Three Little Pigs fairy tale where it was the first house to be blown down. It’s one of those things that we’ve absorbed growing up. That fairy tale has a lot to answer for!
But if you pack the straw as densely as you can in some prefabricated systems there’s no cavity to begin with, and it performs very well in fire too. We like that it’s an unusual material and one that’s new to us. But actually, we have a strong tradition of using straw, and it’s still used in lots of places across the country.
Hempcrete block from HG Matthews. “Made of hemp and lime, these non-structural blocks are primarily used in timber-framed buildings where they provide insulation, thermal mass, and a backing for plasters and renders.”
George Massoud Last year, we spent a lot of time working with clay and clay renders, developing different kinds of tones – with and without pigments – and seeing what came out naturally.
Summer Islam We’re also using corrugated hemp cladding, a hemp fibre and bio-resin composite developed by us and Margent Farm. The product was developed for the Flat House at Margent Farm in Huntingdon.
How did did hemp become part of your material vocabulary?
Paloma Gormley A friend of mine is a hemp farmer and suggested hemp as a good insulating material. We had a project in Greenwich where the site constraints meant that we were going to have to build without scaffolding, erect a timber frame, and then insulate from the inside. We were working through the different possibilities in terms of wall build-up and insulation. Hempcrete, a mixture of hemp and lime, answered so many problems. It’s such a simple material and we found it delivers thermally-efficient monolithic walls that can protect timber frames from fire. It was a self-build project with people that didn’t have much experience on construction sites. That was the first time we used it, and we’ve worked with it on a few other projects before using it again on the Flat House.
