What happens when we recognize the intelligence of materials and learn to work with it responsibly, collectively, and collaboratively?
News
Editorial
Issue 4: Material World - Plural Intelligences
Date
11 September 2026
It was 1984 when a famous pop star declared: "Cause everybody's living in a material world." Four decades later, those words resonate with renewed urgency. The material world continues to shape how we produce, consume, and assign value, yet the systems that sustain it are increasingly revealing their limits. This is the starting point of the fourth issue of the Notes on Plural Intelligences journal.
For this issue, we explored indigenous knowledge and regenerative futures with researcher Julia Watson, who visited Casa IED in New York in May 2026. We also met experimental fashion designer Raquel Buj during her residency in the Ebro Delta, Spain, to discuss what it means to dress a landscape and to work with biomaterials today. In conversation with Atelier MARE, we examined how territories, architecture, and materiality intertwine throughout their practice. Meanwhile, Graziela Nivoloni, coordinator of the IED São Paulo Biodesign Lab, invites us to imagine a future of abundance, in which we design with living systems rather than merely extracting from them.
The adaptability of the city of Matera's architecture with its territory inspired the final collection of Francesco Saverio Matera, titled Materia, in which adaptive fashion design brings together aesthetics, functionality, and sustainability. Today, the collection has evolved into a brand of the same name and recently received the Camera Moda Fashion Trust Grant 2026, awarded by the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana.
This issue is dedicated to innovation, but also to our collective capacity to engage with matter responsibly through design practices grounded in care, adaptability, and ecological reciprocity.
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