About the project

Since autumn 2023, MATT+FIONA have been working with the learning team at the Museum of the Home in Hoxton to create a new adobe brick press and mould which will soon be installed in the museum’s grounds. This is part of the wider landscaping of a new discovery garden which will be used to engage local school groups with making processes and the natural world.

While  the project focuses on the learning outcomes for the young people, who have had first-hand experience of a variety of hands-on making processes, the bricks will be still used in the continued landscaping of the discovery garden!

Inspired by the museum’s collection and the nature in their local area, the designs for the bricks have come out of three workshops with Year 5 students from William Davis Primary School using a variety of techniques and materials to create unique patterns. These were then made into wooden prototypes which we vacuum-formed and cast in rubber, ready to press into the homemade adobe. A fully working press will then be installed in April, when school groups will be able to create their own bricks using the developed designs.

The project came out of an existing partnership with the museum; last year we worked with them to prototype a modular ‘Mini-home of the Future’, which served as the basis for a range of educational activities and family drop-in days over the summer.