FranklinTill’s Radical Matter: Rethinking materials for a sustainable future

For over 13 years – even before they started research and forecasting consultancy FranklinTill – Caroline Till and Kate Franklin have been exploring the role of the designer and maker in shaping the sustainable future of the material world. This year, their research culminates in the new book Radical Matter – a wide-ranging and visually beautiful compendium of the experimental approaches, new materials and revolutionary thinkers that are rewriting design convention and creating a blueprint for a new model of production and consumption.

Shit, hair and dust. Soot, soya and sawdust. Fungus and cellulose. All over the world, an emerging generation of designers and makers are rethinking raw materials, repurposing waste, and presenting radical solutions to the challenges of making and surviving in the modern world. In these 256 pages, FranklinTill present a snapshot of projects and material innovations by the designers at the forefront of the making revolution. Experimental, visionary and motivated by sustainability and social welfare, they and their ideas are, perhaps, our best hope for the long-term future of our society, our planet and the objects we use everyday.

Radical Matter is underpinned by the knowledge that the planet’s resources are finite and dwindling; that human production generates vast and increasing quantities of waste; and that, for decades, the design industries have colluded in a ‘take-make-discard’ model of consumption that actively nurtures the seeds of its own destruction.