Project Materia 2026: Matek
Project Materia 2026, group installation. Image courtesy Project Materia, Mater and Edition Solenne.
The second chapter reverses the material premise. Discarded matter, given the weight of marble.
Project Materia 2026 is not simply the sequel to the 2025 edition. It reverses the material premise. The first chapter began with ancient materials already carrying cultural authority; the 2026 edition begins with a circular material that has to earn that authority in public.
The project's headline proposition is direct: discarded matter, given the weight of marble. That sentence is powerful because it does not pretend that waste-derived material arrives with the same history as bronze, marble or glass. It asks whether exhibition, authorship and artistic pressure can help produce a new material dignity.
Material framework
The 2026 edition is built around Matek, Mater's circular material made from coffee shells, sawdust and recycled plastic. Project Materia describes it as dense, tactile and stone-like, produced with established furniture-industry techniques and presented as a shared medium for nine commissions.
This is a sharper curatorial problem than the 2025 edition. In 2025, the materials were old enough to risk becoming symbols. In 2026, Matek risks becoming a sustainability slogan. The exhibition has to hold the material between those dangers: neither heritage fetish nor green marketing, but a working medium with its own limits and possibilities.
Cohort and structure
The 2026 cohort is Cathrine Raben Davidsen, Sophie Dries, Willem van Hooff, Lea Colombo, Onno Adriaanse, Jacob Egeberg, Forever Studio, Filippo Andrighetto, Oliver Thygesen. The selection is built around difference: artists, architects, designers, material-led studios and a CPHwood founder. A single circular material can only prove its range if it is forced through genuinely different practices.
The Copenhagen presentation at Købmagergade 3 during 3daysofdesign is only the first public condition. The project is structured as a travelling platform, with Paris and London announced after Copenhagen and a United States continuation planned for 2027. That touring logic shifts Project Materia from exhibition to programme.
The exhibition's promise is that waste-derived matter can carry form, authorship, difficulty and desirability without hiding its origin.
At Rudolph Tegners Museum
The 2026 works are shown as sculptural presences against architecture, landscape and context, not isolated as product shots. The Tegners setting gives the objects a field of comparison: concrete mass, sculpture park, terrain, museum volume and the slow authority of an art-historical site.
Press and reception
The public language around the 2026 edition already treats Project Materia as a press-facing platform rather than a private sales initiative. Project Materia lists international recognition across Dezeen, Designboom, Wallpaper*, Vogue, Elle Decor and Frame, while 3daysofdesign frames the edition around nine newly commissioned works in Matek. In 2025, coverage responded to ancient materials being reopened through contemporary artists. In 2026, the project asks whether a circular industrial material can gather comparable cultural authority under the same pressure: artist commission, exhibition, photography, collector communication and international design-media circulation.
Edition Solenne's role
Edition Solenne's 2026 role is to help convert material innovation into cultural language. Mater supplies the material and industrial knowledge; Tableau supplies curatorial and spatial direction; Edition Solenne acts as co-founder, co-host, marketing and sales engine, and the bridge to artist context, edition structure, collecting and narrative documentation. Project Materia 2026 is not only about sustainability. It is about whether circularity can survive contact with artistic ambition.
