Things Are Never Just Things

What materiality can teach us about identity, memory, home, and the quiet production of space

When I first think about materiality, the immediate association is fairly straightforward: what something is made of. Wood, stone, glass, steel, textile. This is also how architects and designers are often trained to approach material at first through performance, texture, durability, construction, cost, and appearance. But the more interesting question begins when we stop asking only what a material is and start asking what it does. Elin Manker and Mårten Snickare describe materiality as a way of directing attention toward the role of the material world in relations between people, objects, bodies, practices, and environments. Weight, texture, resistance, placement, durability, and physical form do not simply sit there waiting for interpretation; they affect what can be done, how bodies move, and how situations are experienced (Manker & Snickare, 2023, pp. 3–6). For me, coming from architecture and design, this shift is particularly productive because it moves the discussion away from material as specification and toward material as participation. A table is no longer interesting only because it is made of oak or steel. It becomes interesting because of what happens around it, who gathers there, what routines develop, what memories…