Cent Magazine has included The Shape of Memory in its look at why materials matter at London Design Festival 2026.
The article sets Deniz's work alongside some of the most forward-looking material innovation at the festival. Where many exhibitors ask what materials could become, our installation asks a different question: what do the materials of a historic building already hold?
Reading the fabric of a building
For a year, Deniz worked at Fort Gilkicker in Gosport with artists Sally Tyrie and Pippa Charlesworth and maker Craig Palmer of Spin 360. Together they gathered the fort's smallest and most easily overlooked traces: scratches, stone shavings, handmade iron nails, burnt timber and flecks of green paint. Even the brick fragments produced by core drilling for a new staircase were kept.
Most projects would clear these away as debris. For a conservation architect, they are evidence. Each carries a record of the labour that built the fort, the decades of use and repair, and the decay and loss in between.
That way of looking is at the heart of how we approach historic buildings. Before deciding what to change, we try to understand what is already there.
At Material Matters
The research has led to Gilkicker Light No.01, an etched brass light shaped by the fort's geometry and coloured by fire. It is on show with the materials, sketches and prototypes behind it at Material Matters, UNLOCKED Shoreditch, 118 Curtain Road, London EC2A 3PJ, until 17 September 2026.