project materia turns coffee shells and e-waste into collectible design in copenhagen
a new life for wasted resources in copenhagen
In central Copenhagen during the city’s annual 3daysofdesign festival, Project Materia returns with an experimental new material. Titled Materia x Mater, the exhibition gathers nine artists around Matek, a circular material developed by Danish brand Mater from discarded coffee shells, sawdust, and recycled plastic.
The project marks the second chapter of Project Materia, the platform founded by Tableau and Edition Solenne to explore how materials can shift between artistic practice, collectible design, and cultural memory. Its 2025 edition worked with bronze, marble, and glass. This year, the focus moves away from inherited prestige and toward a material pressed from waste, asking how a surface made through industrial reuse can enter the same conversation as stone.
image © Adam Katz Sinding
nine artists work with matek by mater
For the Copenhagen launch, each invited artist creates one object in Matek, giving Project Materia x Mater a shared constraint that still leaves room for distinct gestures. The cohort brings together Cathrine Raben Davidsen, Sophie Dries, Willem van Hooff, Lea Colombo, Onno Adriaanse, Jacob Egeberg, Forever Studio, Filippo Andrighetto, and Oliver Thygesen, whose practices span sculpture, architecture, photography, collectible furniture, and craft-based construction.
Matek gives the project its throughline. Developed by Mater, the material binds coffee production residue and sawdust from the wood industry with recycled plastic or a plastic-based alternative, then forms it through established furniture-industry techniques. Its surface recalls stone, marble, or terrazzo at first glance, yet its composition brings the viewer closer to a chain of reuse, where food waste, wood dust, and plastic gain a second physical life.
Willem van Hooff, Archive Cabinet (front), Forever Studio, Patos stools (left), Sophie Dries, Stria candleholders (right). image © designboom
between industrial process and collectible design
The strength of Project Materia x Mater comes from the tension between a shared material and widely different ways of handling it. Raben Davidsen’s Parsifal screen is shaped by her background in painting and ceramics, while a pair of Stria candleholders by Dries stand as ‘domestic totems’.
Van Hooff engraves his personal sketches into his Archive Cabinet as a thoughtful homage to his own troubles and life experiences. Adriaanse moves closer to rough sculptural form with his Pyrite Side Table, which mimics the natural phenomenon of crystal twinning.
Other works extend Matek into more spatial or atmospheric territory. Colombo’s ATOM stools take shape from interlocking floral-like shapes, while Forever Studio’s blackened Patos stools reference the solidity of tree trunks. The Monolith table by Copenhagen-based Jacob Egeberg suggests a brutalist-inspired assemblage of blocks.
Meahwwhile Oliver Thygesen’s Rooted table integrates Douglas Fir and stands on a cluster of rounded legs. Finally, with its pixelated visual language, Andrighetto’s Space Invader side table is inspired by the iconic 1978 video game.
Oliver Thygesen, Rooted table (left), Raben Davidsen, Parsifal screen (right). image © designboom
a circular material enters the gallery space
Inside the ground-floor setting at Købmagergade 3, Copenhagen, the project places waste-derived matter within the language of collectible design, without turning circularity into a slogan. The material is dense, and is visually familiar enough to invite comparison with stone.
However, its story resists the usual romance of quarry, kiln, or foundry. It comes from existing resources, then gains form through pressure, molding, and the hands of artists asked to treat it as a medium rather than just a substitute.
After its Copenhagen debut during 3daysofdesign, Materia x Mater will travel to Paris in autumn 2026, then to London in 2026 or 2027, before continuing to the United States in 2027.
That tour gives the project a wider frame at a moment when design culture is looking closely at how materials are sourced, valued, and given presence.
Filippo Andrighetto, Space Invader. image © designboom
Oliver Thygesen, Rooted table. image © designboom
