Benedetta PompiliDesignMaterial Research
About Benedetta Pompili (IT, 1995) is a social designer based in Amsterdam. A dedication to materials with a focus on their narratives and environmental impact identifies her practice. She rethinks manufacturing techniques and their aesthetics toward circular making. Her research aims to share knowledge, motivate care, and retrace tradition by thinking and acting in an interdisciplinary way.

Education



Recent and ongoing work






Selected exhibitions

















Publications








Recognitions
Master, Social Design, Design Academy Eindhoven (NL), Gijs Bakker nominee, 2019–2021.
Erasmus, Peter Behrens School of Architecture and Design, Düsseldorf (DE), 2017–2018.
BA, Industrial Design & Advanced Ceramics, ISIA Faenza (IT), Cum laude, 2014–2018.

Residency, Creative Residency Arita, January 2024-ongoing.
Tutor, Natural Materials in Ceramics, The Material Way, January 2024-ongoing.
Fellow Researcher, LINA x TU Wien, Vienna, October 2023-ongoing.
Tutor, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (NL), September–December 2023. 
Ceramic workshop specialist, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (NL), March 2023–ongoing.
Ceramic production consulent, Bruno Baietto’s In Bones We Dwell, Dordrecht’s Museum (NL), 2023.
Ceramic workshop specialist, Royal Academy of the Arts, The Hague (NL), January-August 2023.

RAW.obj
, Prinsenhof Museum Delft, The Netherlands, February-June 2024.
In Presence of Your Absence
, Hong Kong Design Institute, Hong Kong (China), January-May 2024.
Conversing with Matter,
Sustainable Ceramics, Princessehof Ceramic Museum (NL), Nov 2023–2024.
In Bones We Dwell For Yours We Wait
, consultancy for Bruno Baietto, Dordrecht’s Museum (NL), July 2023.
In Presence of Your Absence, ADI Design Museum, Milan (IT), 2023.
Vestiges, Alcova, Fuorisalone, Milan (IT), 2023.
In Presence of Your Absence, Material District, Utrecht (NL), 2023.
Raw.obj, The Future of Art Making, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (NL), 2022.
Ciona Are Doing Well, SVA Bio Art Lab, New York, 2022.
SPAZIO 1/2: Worskshop “Clay Dialogues”, Drop City, Fuorisalone, Milano (IT), 2022.
Sea Silt, collaboration with Humade, Ceramics Museum Princessehof, Leeuwarden (NL), 2022. 
Conversing with Matter, DAE75!, Fuorisalone, Milano (IT), 2022.
Conversing with Matter, Rethinking Plastic, Yksi Expo , Eindhoven (NL), 2022.
Conversing with Matter, Design Fest Gent, Design Museum Gent, Gent (BE), 2022. 
Conversing with Matter, From the Ground Up, Material Source Studio, Manchester (UK), 2022.
Conversing with Matter, Design Open, Kazerne, Eindhoven (NL), 2021–2022. 
Conversing with Matter, Dutch Design Week 2021, DAE Graduation Show, Eindhoven (NL).
Ciona Are Doing Well, Interspecies Futures, by Oscar Salguero, NY Center for Book Arts, 2021.

Conversing with Matter,
Design Unlimited Turkey, October 2023.
In Presence of Your Absence
, Italy: A New Collective Lanscape, Mousse Magazine Ed., April 2023.

Conversing with Matter, DAMN Magazine, Issue N° 82, June 2022.
Conversing with Matter, Plural Magazine, 2022.     ︎︎︎Conversing with Matter, Elementa Oslo, 2022.
Conversing with Matter, The Color Association, 2021.
Conversing with Matter, Het Financieele Dagblad, Culture section, 2021.
Conversing with Matter, Wallpaper Magazine, Design section, 2021.
Ciona Are Doing Well, Design Parallax, curated by Angela Rui, MDFF Greece, 2020.

Grant, Starting Design Grant, Stimuleringsfonds, The Netherlands, 2023-2024.     
Award, Young New Talent, Material District, Utrecht (NL), 2023.
Grant, Creative Residency Arita, Japan, Stimuleringsfonds, 2024.
Grant, Building Talent, Stimuleringsfonds, The Netherlands, 2021.
Nominee, Gijs Bakker Design Award, Design Academy Eindhoven, 2021.

Studio details
KvK 84375779
Btw-id NL003954350B29

Instagram
info@benedettapompili.com

Conversing with Matter




Gijs Bakker Award Nominee 2021
Realised in collaboration with sunday morning EKWC, Wetering, and Asbeter Holding.
Graduation project for Design Academy Eindhoven



The relative abundance of clay on earth overshadows its finite nature and the damages caused by its extraction. Starting from the conversation with the clay on the potter’s wheel and along the making process, the material research Conversing with Matter on the one hand explores the economic, social, and technical aspects entangled around the mining and the making. On the other, it proposes an alternative journey to making while minimising the countereffects of the extraction.
       The research starts by investigating the reclamation of clay from the local sludge of the river Maas. The employment of river clay has multiple sustainability aims. A gradual harvesting method allows the riverbanks to clean and regenerate, keeps local colours, textures, and properties while promoting a refamiliarisation with regional river bodies. River clay urges to care for what goes dispersed into urban waters as clay absorbs and tracks the chemical contamination encompassing it. 
       The marbling with a common studio clay, a white stoneware from Germany, allowed for an easier application of the wild clay body, otherwise uneasy to manage. The conversations between and with these two clay bodies on the potter’s wheel materialise in an archive made of pots inspired by Jacoba jugs. Mirroring the nature of the two clays, Jacobas were traded from Germany, the origin of the stoneware, to the Netherlands, where the river clay came from. Due to shipwrecks, many Jacobas still lay down in the river bed. The inspiration from the archaeologic findings was thought as a way to tell the stories of the materials and highlight their geographial origins while crafting a shape to archive the process. Potters say that to start understanding the clay on the potter’s wheel it is needed to throw at least one hundred pots. Hence, one hundred samples of conversations were led.
        By collaborating with a local research centre treating asbestos-cement and turning it in safe silica, the second part of the research explores the application of the by-prodcuct of the treatment of asbestos as a filler in the clay. This uncommon grog, thought of as such for the first time, strenghens the body of the clay while reducing the quantity of material needed. It in fact can substitute the 50% of the amount of clay needed. The material exploration was materialised in a set of 450 wall tiles, configuring the architectural and insulating possibilities of the composition while in dialogue with the uses of asbestos in the past.