IED AWARDS 2019
Materials Library accessions range from
aluminium honeycomb to a rotting potato
New projects are born here because of
those adjacencies.”
ED: How exportable is the Institute of
Making model?
ZL: “Within an educational context in
general it’s very exportable, because it
essentially puts forward your interest.
Through being interested in a thing, you
need to find out about it; for example, you
can learn some equations for stiffness,
if you want to make sure this thing won’t
bend. Then you do a bit of maths. It’s that
model that some schools take on, which
is project-driven.”
ED: What Institute of Making project are
you most proud of?
ZL: “There’s a spectrum. The people who
came here so frightened and unconfident,
but left with a new hobby – they for me
are as rewarding as a proper project.
Because you don’t know where the
edges are. That’s something that we
live by. Doing something for fun can
quickly become a proper project, and is
the best project because you want to
do it. However, we also had a member
who, in conjunction with their research
project, developed a new design and
simultaneously a new material for a
3D-priinted honeycomb matrix bicycle
crash helmet. He basically developed the
prototypes here, got seed funding and
is now it is being rolled out and he’s got
huge amounts of investment. I’m proud of
the journeys that I see people going on, as
well as the research outputs. In my heart
of hearts, it’s about people. We’re about
materials and making and processing, but
it’s the human stories that I find the most
rewarding, when you really feel it’s meant
something to someone.”
ED: You do a lot of media, with
programmes on Radio 4 and semi-regular
stints on This Morning, for example. Why
is that important to you?
ZL: “It’s about enthusiasm and the power
of realising that you’re not the only one
who cares about these things, that it’s
part of a map of things that you can plug
into. When you have realised that you’ve
heard me on the radio, or seen me on
telly, and if it piques your interest, that’s
a gateway to this world. We don’t only
collect materials, we also collect people
who think that this is for them as well.”
ED: How did you, coming from a farming
background, and with an interest in all
kinds of things, end up with a PhD?
ZL: “Part of my modus operandi is saying
yes to opportunities. If someone says,
‘Do you want to come on telly?’ I’ll give
it a go, and then if it goes all right I’ll
do it again. I want to try to say yes to
stuff, because how do you know? The
opportunity to do a PhD wasn’t one that
I set out to find; it came to me. My first
degree was film and performance studies
in Aberystwyth where I found accidentally
an incredible course about processes
and materials. I was making things, and
it could be sculpture, but it brought the
3D of art and turned it 4D by adding time.
I started looking at the performance of
things, essentially, and how this has got
an agency. If I shake up this can pointing
to a tin of shaving foam and squeeze
this, we know what’s going to happen;
shaving foam is going to spray out
everywhere. That is a very performative
act; it is live and has an effect. And then
you realise the word ‘performance’ lives
in material science and engineering as
well, as in ‘What’s the performance of
this rubber when under stress?’ I realised
that ultimately knowing more about that
was going to make better things.”
INSTITUTE OF MAKING
TOOLS LIST (SELECTED)
Angle grinder
Bernina 1008 mechanical sewing machine
Chester Champion no 20V milling machine
Chester Engineering lathe DB10VS
Compressed air spray gun
Cordless drill
CR Clarke strip heater 600S
Formech 300XQ vacuum former
George Knight DK16 heat press
Glue gun
Hameg 100MHz 4-channel digital oscilloscope
LeCroy Wavestation 2012 waveform generator
Next Engine 3D laser scanner
Overhead gantry crane, 10t capacity
Raspberry Pi
Rohde Ecotop 60 electric kiln
Roland Modela Pro II CNC miller/router
Startrite 502E bandsaw
tinkerCAD software
Ultimaker 2 3D printer
Universal Laser Systems laser cutter
Wheel sander
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