Still Living in the Material World

In the midst of a howling gale of digital disruption, and the black swan event of a pandemic, we find ourselves looking to find reassurance by turning back to the fundamentals and by asking ourselves about the nature of how we interact with each other, and how we can come together to be humans.

Still living in the material world brings together 12 projects from around the world that explore in contexts as diverse as Yoruba culture, reconstructed post war Coventry, and contemporary Norway, and in very different ways, the basic questions of what it means to live together. This is a disparate group of young architects who show us that while everything has changed, at the same time, everything has stayed the same. The human fundamentals of touch, place, and memory matter now more than ever. How do we eat together, live together, and work together. How do we remember our pasts, without shutting down our futures.

Deyan Sudjic

Issey Fang's Vertical Street

Oscar Murray's A Network of Estates

The Urban Monastery: In Context — Situated in the the East Village neighbourhood of Manhattan, the low-rise surroundings and tree canopy of Tompkins Square Park allow you to rise up and out of the city on climbing upwards within the monastery.

Jonny Ryley's The Refectory: An Urban Monastery

Adalberto Lonardi's The Arcadian Gardens: the Stables

Adalberto Lonardi's The United Generations

Peizheng Zou's Recalling - the memory of Sheerness

Rachel Housley's Three Eras of Calcium Metabolism

Blue and white map of Norway detailing the E39 highway

Alex Boyce's The E39

Nichamon Dejprasert's Communal Kitchen and Living Space

Fraser Ingram's The Lost City of Coventry

Deyan Sudjic

Deyan Sudjic is Director Emeritus of the Design Museum, having led the move of the museum from its original home to the restored former Commonwealth Institute building in Kensington. He is a distinguished Professor of Architecture and Design Studies at Lancaster University and a writer, critic and curator.

He is a former editor of Domus Magazine, and the founding editor of Blueprint. He has been the Director of the Venice Architecture Biennale, and a critic for the Observer. His most recent book, The Language of Cities is published by Penguin, and last year he curated Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition. He was a Visiting Professor in Design Products at the RCA and is a Senior Fellow.

Still Living in the Material World

Curator Biography