Extra Ordinary was a show of 14 international designers who have all found extraordinary ways of working with materials, products or processes that most of us consider ordinary. Whether through object, lighting, furniture or jewellery, they have a common ground in questioning attitudes to value and beauty, seeing potential where it has been overlooked.

From playful material experiments such as Luisa Kahlfeldt's cardboard stools and Ying Chang's bubble wrap vessels, to Odd Matter's large-scale thinking about how we use and abuse furniture, all the designers selected for the exhibition show incredible resourcefulness, imagination and daring. They find new ways of seeing what surrounds us. 

Out of the ordinary, these designers have discovered surprising aesthetics, created structure from surface materials, and invented new and sophisticated methods for recycling. Jorge Penades Structural Skin, Silo Studio's PPPPP and Krupka-Stieghan's Recreate Textiles focus on the creative potential of waste, while others, like Martijn Rigters, play with process. Rachel Harding's Wonderfluro, Soft Baroque's Mouldings and Paul Puskarich's Heatsink Chair all give standard industrial components a new narrative as something decorative and alluring.

As well as extraordinary thinking, many have demonstrated extrordinary skill. It's not easy to take matter designed for one task and explore how it could fulfil another. Our hope for this show was to inspire every visitor to look at everyday objects and materials afresh, and to wonder about their extrordinary possibilities.

Extra Ordinary's participants were:

David Steiner, Jorge Penades, Krupka--Stieghan Studio, Lex Pott, Luisa Kahlfeldt, Martijn Rigters, Odd Matter, Paul Puskarich, Rachel Harding, Roisin Johns, Silo Studio, Simin Qiu, Soft Baroque and Ying Chang.

Curator Riya Patel

Photographer Amandine Alessandra.

Graphic Design Simon Kühn.

Printing Two Press.

Paper G F Smith.