Architect Deniz Beck makes London Design Festival debut with research-led exhibition The Shape of Memory at Material Matters
Architect Deniz Beck makes London Design Festival debut at
Material Matters with research-led exhibition – 15-17 September 2026
The Shape of Memory installation explores ways in which visitors to heritage sites can take away a tangible connection to the place without reducing it to a souvenir
Portsmouth-based conservation architect Deniz Beck is known for specialising in the sensitive regeneration of historic buildings and monuments. This September, Deniz presents The Shape of Memory – her inaugural research-led installation at Material Matters during Shoreditch Design Week at London Design Festival 2026. The exhibition presents the outcome of Stories You Can Hold, a one-year R&D project at Fort Gilkicker, in Gosport Hampshire, exploring how heritage sites, artists, artisan makers and design-led venues can collaborate to create site-specific, story-rich, limited-edition design objects.
The exhibition explores the transformation of found fragments from the historic Fort Gilkicker into a contemporary light piece. It brings together conservation architect Deniz Beck, artists Sally Tyrie and Pippa Charlesworth, and Craig Palmer of Spin 360, a local Portsmouth-based maker known for bespoke, handmade, naval-inspired light fittings.
“The project began with Sally and I repeatedly visiting Fort Gilkicker to collect and record small traces often lost during construction and conservation work: scratches, markings, stone shavings, handmade iron nails, metal fragments, burnt timber, remnants of green paint and debris from the changing fabric of the site. These fragments were treated not as waste, but as a material archive of the fort, carrying evidence of labour, use, decay, repair and loss.” ~ explains Deniz.
Alongside this physical collecting, Deniz used LiDAR scanning on her phone to capture Fort Gilkicker at a particular moment in time. The fragmented nature of these scans became central to the project. For Deniz, they reflect the way memory works: incomplete, emotional and never perfectly matching what has happened.
Sally’s work responds to this idea, not by reproducing the site literally, but by translating it through touch, pattern, colour, shadow and material intuition. Sally has developed a series of designs shaped by the geometry of Fort Gilkicker, especially its relationship between light and dark: deep openings, heavy walls, enclosed spaces, shadows and sudden moments of illumination. From this process, the idea of a light fitting emerged as the final object.
Craig Palmer from Spin 360 was invited to develop the prototype in response to Sally’s design. Through workshop visits, the team explored brass pieces, etching, fire-marking and fabrication techniques. One key outcome was an etched brass surface altered and coloured through fire, echoing the burnt timber found on site and embedding the memory of heat, accident and transformation into the object itself.
At Material Matters, the exhibition presents this journey as a compact linear installation, moving from raw fragment to finished light piece. Visitors encounter original found artefacts, LiDAR scans, Sally’s sketches and studies, material tests, brass samples, prototype elements and the final light fitting.
The final light piece includes NFC tags, allowing visitors to access digital layers of the project: scans, collected materials, artist drawings, workshop tests, process notes and historical context. In this way, the piece becomes both physical and digital, functional and narrative, contemporary and rooted in a specific historic site.
The exhibition places material intelligence at the centre of the story. Burnt timber, granite, iron, brass, paint, light, shadow and digital scan data all become active materials within the work. The project also examines wider industry conversations around reuse, local craft, circular thinking, ethical collaboration, limited-edition production and the cultural afterlife of historic places.
The installation is brought to life with hanging fabric prints by artist Pippa Charlesworth which respond to the fort site and to the wider collaborative process. Her work extends the exhibition’s exploration of how material traces, architectural details and acts of close observation can be translated into contemporary forms of making.
At Fort Gilkicker, Pippa’s work pays particular attention to the ironwork shield frames – the corroded surfaces, engineered forms and military associations of which offer a direct connection to the fort’s past and its present transformation – responding to the layers of construction, weathering, repair and conservation visible across the site, treating it as a material archive.
“The Shape of Memory is not simply an exhibition about making a beautiful object. It proposes a repeatable model for heritage-led design, where artists and makers work with sites in a deeper and more ethical way. As part of the broader R&D project, I am developing an artist collaboration and licensing framework to support fair partnerships between heritage sites, artists, makers and venues, considering authorship, intellectual property, royalties and long-term value.” ~ comments Deniz.
The final light piece is not merely inspired by Fort Gilkicker. It is shaped by its geometry, marked by its materials and made through a collaboration rooted in place. At Material Matters, the exhibition invites visitors to consider not only what materials are, but what they hold: memory, labour, damage, repair, imagination and the possibility of being carried forward.
“I’m delighted to bring The Shape of Memory to Material Matters – it is the perfect platform for a project that explores the relationship between materials, heritage, making and memory. The installation is the result of a truly collaborative journey, showing how historic places can inspire new forms of contemporary design while celebrating local craftsmanship, reuse and storytelling. I hope it encourages visitors to see materials not simply as physical objects, but as carriers of history, care and possibility." ~ concludes Deniz.
)
){kind=logo}
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=logo}
)
)
){kind=logo}
)
){kind=logo}
)
)
){kind=logo}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=logo}
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=logo}
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=icon}
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)