'Hand, Code, Matter: A New Flow for Spatial Design’ by Matrix Design at Material Matters London.
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The exhibition, curated by Pick Up Architecture and designed by Farrokh Aman, is organised around the following themes, revealing a strategic design workflow;
Hand
‘Hand’ represents the designer’s own judgement and imagination - the instincts, cultural references and lived experience no tool can generate. Presenting eight projects designed by recent architecture graduates, each expressing a range of human needs and emotions, including cultural heritage, ageing, displacement and humour.
Code
‘Code’ explores the application of Lovspark AI, an AI-powered spatial design tool, which has been used by each of the selected graduates to move fluidly between code and craft. Lovspark AI expands the designer’s ability to explore directions and variations while leaving selection, editing and creative judgement firmly in human hands. Each presentation demonstrates how Lovspark AI seamlessly supports the workflow of architects, interior designers and spatial designers. Visitors can experience Lovspark AI for themselves at a dedicated hands-on station throughout the exhibition.
Matter
‘Matter’ is where the digital ideas explored through Hand and Code return to the physical world of materials, furnishings and spatial delivery. Lovspark AI supports the exploration of design possibilities, while MIX brings material selection, furnishings and supply-chain knowledge into the conversation. Together, the exhibition traces how an idea can move from digital exploration towards tangible and producible spatial outcomes.
Exhibitor presentations.
The eight exhibitor presentations collectively span hand-drawing, community-led planning and materiality illustrating how imagination, AI and materials can combine across very different contexts;
Kotaro Bean presents 'The Hundred Year Home - A Mnemonic Survey', surveying his grandmother's home in Japan, through continuous revision and hand drawing that traces over a century of ageing, comfort and environmental adaptation including a Tokonoma collage developed using Lovspark AI.
Luke Gifford presents 'Childhood Fiction for Rural India' based on the rural town of Kumbanad, Kerala. Using the native crafts of embroidery and thatch to reimagine abandoned homes as an elder-care facility and a storytelling-led nursery, Luke incorporated Lovspark AI as a process tool to visualise the next iteration of his own analogue, hand-made models.
Juntao Liu presents 'More Than a Home', transforming a vacant office building in London’s Canary Wharf into collective housing, where a continuous circulation loop reinterprets shared space as social infrastructure for post-pandemic London.
Amanda Carnovale presents 'Patching Poggioreale', addressing a Sicilian town devastated by the 1968 Belice Valley earthquake through textile-based, fabric-formed interventions alongside traditional rubble-masonry; Amanda used Lovspark AI to create atmospheric, narrative-focused images of her physical models, as a way of testing the physical occupation of spaces.
Other presentations include:
Ioana Enache’s project 'The People's Palace', a people's archive at Cântarea României, Bucharest, where testimonies become architectural maquettes by day and theatre by night. Ilinca Stanescu’s 'Courthouse of Heritage', built from deconstructed architectural fragments at Roșia Montana, housing a legal core, UNESCO offices and a craft school for repair and reintegration. Cristian Francioso presents 'Architecture for Dementia', transforming a vacant mirror-image home into a space of discreet, supportive care built from reconstructed familiar rooms, and Benson Pui Lam Chan presents 'A Bamboo Sanctuary', a bamboo civic centre in Sheung Wan, Hong Kong, offering displaced residents a place to meet, work and rebuild community.
Curated by Pick Up Architecture and designed by Farrokh Aman, ‘Hand, Code, Matter’ presents a journey from human imagination to AI-assisted exploration and, ultimately, to materials and physical space. The exhibition also features Lovspark AI in its first UK exhibition presentation.
The Material Matters fair takes place at UNLOCKED Shoreditch from 15–17 September, with Matrix Design and Pick Up Architecture joining the Material Matters talks programme to expand on the ideas behind it.
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