Last week, LOXKIN spent three days at Shoreditch Design Week, exhibiting as part of Material Matters. We went there to share what we are doing with hemp, wood finishing and circular material systems, but we came away thinking just as much about something else: connection.
Being surrounded by designers, makers, architects, researchers and material-led businesses made it clear that some of the most interesting work happening in design today is not necessarily about inventing something completely new. Often, it is about learning to see value differently, recognising potential in a waste stream, looking again at an overlooked material, or thinking beyond how a product is made to how long it can remain useful, how it can be repaired, and what happens to it afterwards.
That thinking sits very close to a growing philosophy we have been developing at LOXKIN called Value Ecology. At its simplest, the idea is that value already exists, and that waste is often just value that has become disconnected.
Throughout Shoreditch, we saw that expressed in many different forms. Young designers were experimenting with unconventional and overlooked materials, furniture makers were questioning established processes, and material innovators were creating new uses for things that might previously have been discarded.
A brilliant example was Fallen & Felled, who take trees that have fallen or are being felled in and around London and turn that material into furniture-grade hardwood for makers, designers and architects. Rather than seeing the end of a tree’s life in the city as the end of its value, they reconnect that material with a new use and give it another life.
Across the week, we kept seeing versions of the same idea: existing value being recognised, preserved and connected to something new. And across all of it were links between craft, science, design, art and the natural world.
The power of connection
One of the strongest lessons actually came through our own experience of the week. Sabine from Zetteler (aka the Mycelium) encouraged us to leave our stand, explore the wider festival and meet people she thought we should know. Those introductions led us into conversations we almost certainly would not otherwise have had, and they were a reminder that innovation rarely happens in isolation.
We were also incredibly grateful for the people who gave us the freedom to do that. Franzi, one of the graduates we have been working with through Swiss Re, came down and helped us run the stand, while Andy and Niki from the Swiss Re Shine cohort also gave us a full day of their time and support. That meant Nathaniel and I could step away, explore the wider event, meet other exhibitors and follow up on introductions without leaving the stand unattended.
That support made a real difference, and reinforced the wider point: opportunities often emerge because someone creates the space for connection to happen.
There are farmers with knowledge, researchers with knowledge, designers with ideas, manufacturers with capability and businesses with demand. Yet unless those people are connected, much of that potential remains dormant.
We see exactly the same challenge within hemp. Growers, processors, researchers, manufacturers and designers often sit within different networks, each solving one part of the problem without always being connected to the others. Sometimes the most valuable role is simply knowing which people need to be in the same room. Good networks do more than introduce people; they create the conditions for new ideas, projects and collaborations to emerge.
Forest, material, object
Undoubtedly one of the highlights of the week was visiting Wood for the Trees, an exhibition by the American Hardwood Export Council in collaboration with Mitre & Mondays and Benchmark.
The installation was designed to evoke the feeling of standing within a forest, with tall timber forms rising through the space and timber suspended overhead. What made it especially powerful was that it was not simply a display of finished objects. It told a much wider story about forests, timber, making and the relationship between natural systems and design.
Each day, one of the timber “trees” within the installation was felled and transformed into a stool, with young people brought into the making process. The exhibition itself therefore changed over the course of the week as material moved from tree, to timber, to object.
For us, that was incredibly inspiring. It brought together forestry, science, art, design, craft, education and regenerative thinking in one experience. Rather than sustainability being something added to the story afterwards, it was embedded in the way the exhibition had been conceived and in the physical journey of the material itself.
That was one of the moments during the week where the idea of everything being connected felt especially clear. The forest was not treated as something separate from the object, and the object was not treated as separate from the people making it. The material, the knowledge, the process and the people were all part of the same story.
It also made us think more deeply about where LOXKIN can sit within that journey. We often arrive towards the end of the making process, when somebody needs to choose a finish. But perhaps there is an opportunity for us to be part of the design conversation much earlier — working alongside designers, makers and material researchers when decisions around materials, longevity, repairability, finishing and end-of-life are still being made.
Why finish matters
On the final day, LOXKIN co-founder Nathaniel gave a short talk around something we have been thinking about for a long time: why finish matters.
By that point in the week, we had already spent several days thinking about connection between forests and objects, waste streams and new uses, designers and makers, growers and materials. Finishing is part of that same story.
A piece of timber can travel through an incredibly thoughtful process, from forest management and material selection through design and making, only for the final choice of finish to affect what happens next. The finish can influence how the surface performs, how the object ages, how easily it can be maintained and repaired, and ultimately whether that material can remain useful and connected to a circular system.
But Shoreditch also reinforced another kind of connection for us: the physical connection between the maker and the material
A maker can spend hours, days or even weeks working a piece of timber with their hands, selecting it, shaping it, sanding it and slowly turning it into an object. Then, at the very final stage, conventional finishing processes can mean putting on gloves, pulling on a mask and creating a barrier between themselves and the material they have been connected to throughout the entire making process.
We have become increasingly passionate about removing that disconnect wherever the finishing system allows it. There is something powerful about being able to remain connected to the material at that final moment, applying a simple natural finish by hand rather than treating finishing as a hazardous process that has to be separated from everything that came before it.
For us, that is another reason finishing is much more than a cosmetic decision. It is one of the final design decisions made before an object enters use, and it has the potential either to preserve the value already embodied in the material or make that value harder to recover later.
And the connections extend even further.
One of the simplest things we shared repeatedly at Shoreditch was that for every 100 litres of LOXKIN hemp oil used, roughly one acre of hemp needs to be grown in the UK. It was striking how strongly that resonated with people and how much people care .
Suddenly, the choice of finish on a table, chair or piece of joinery was no longer just a decision being made in a workshop. It could be connected directly back to a British field.
That relationship really matters to us. As demand for the oil grows, so does the potential demand for UK-grown hemp. A choice made by a designer, architect or furniture maker can therefore send a signal all the way back through the supply chain to agriculture.
The forest, the material, the maker, the finish, the person who lives with the object, the farmer growing the crop and whatever happens to that object next are not separate stories. They are part of the same system.
Thinking about those relationships as one connected whole is becoming increasingly central to how we think about LOXKIN.
What we came away with
Shoreditch left us feeling encouraged, not because everyone has sustainability figured out, but because there is clearly a growing community of people willing to ask better questions.
Where did this material come from? What else could it become? Can it be repaired rather than replaced? Can waste become a resource? Can the things we design work more intelligently with natural systems? And what happens when the choices we make in the workshop begin influencing what gets grown in a field?
For us, perhaps the most important question is: who else should be part of the conversation?
The future of sustainable design is unlikely to be created by one perfect material, one perfect product or one company working alone. It will emerge through better relationships between people, materials, knowledge and place.
That may have been our biggest takeaway from Shoreditch.
Our job is not only to make a better finish. It is to keep connecting the things around it, and to keep asking where value already exists but has simply not yet been recognised.
