Floor Design Present 2026 reaffirms its dedication to nurturing rising design expertise, inserting materials innovation, sustainability and future-focused pondering firmly on the coronary heart of the present. Via its ongoing partnerships with the Royal School of Artwork, the Inexperienced Grads initiative and for the primary time the Rising Expertise class throughout the Floor Design Present Awards, the 2026 version highlights a brand new era of designers redefining what floor design could be. Throughout the exhibition, guests will encounter initiatives that problem extractive methods, remodel waste streams and place human and environmental wellbeing on the centre of fabric design.
Among the many featured RCA designers is Zoë Onatoye, whose contemplative follow explores materials reuse, nature and wellbeing. Developed from her grasp’s thesis in collaboration with the Earls Courtroom Growth Firm, her mission transforms development website waste into a transportable hanging backyard for website employees. Utilizing reclaimed scaffolding clamps, fallen lacewood branches, dwelling vegetation and a hand-stitched bioplastic textile, the construction introduces moments of calm inside overstimulating environments, supporting psychological wellbeing whereas enhancing air high quality via direct contact with nature.
Additionally exhibiting is Olivia Webb, whose work questions worth, permanence and materials hierarchies inside structure. Her modular tile system is forged in Jesmonite embedded with discarded rose petals sourced from the business floral business and once-owned bouquets. Because the tiles age and subtly shift over time, they problem standard notions of sturdiness and invite a gentler, extra emotionally responsive method to architectural surfaces. Webb’s research-led follow explores how unstandardised and perishable supplies would possibly inform various constructing methods.
Inexperienced Grads
Floor Design Present’s long-standing help of Inexperienced Grads brings ahead designers pioneering genuinely regenerative materials options.
“We’re a really broad church,” says Barbara Chandler founding father of Inexperienced Grads. “Our Inexperienced Grads have an enormous vary of environmental considerations, from carbon and local weather to new bio-materials, artistic use of waste, air pollution, circularity, sturdiness, restore, biodiversity, diminishing species and rather more. We’re very excited concerning the upcoming Floor Design Present.”
Mobina Rajabimoghadam presents Bio Recursive, an eggshell-based biomaterial composed of 84% waste eggshells sourced from native eating places. Totally compostable, sturdy and machinable, the fabric affords a scalable various to virgin assets whereas avoiding energy-intensive recycling methods. Appropriate for interiors, lighting and product design, the biomaterial demonstrates that natural waste could be reworked into fascinating, high-performance surfaces that regenerate relatively than deplete the surroundings.
Josh Myers showcases Denimolite, a particular composite floor materials created from post-consumer denim, manufacturing off-cuts and difficult-to-recycle stretch materials. Celebrating the visible identification of textile waste relatively than concealing it, every panel options marble-like swirls distinctive to its fibre historical past. Engineered for circularity, Denimolite operates a zero-waste manufacturing course of with take-back schemes at end-of-life, providing architects and designers a premium, sturdy floor with embedded sustainability credentials.
Rising Expertise – Floor Design Present Awards
The Rising Expertise class of the Floor Design Present Awards is new for 2026 and throws a highlight on boundary pushing ideas with real-world potential.
Comfortable Armours: Reimagining Fish Scales by Poulami Saha (foremost picture) explores fish scales as a household of biomaterials for floor and textile design. Reworking a culturally important waste stream from Kolkata markets into bio-sequins, leathers, papers and inside panels, the mission combines biodesign, craft and storytelling. Totally biodegradable and produced utilizing low-tech, non-toxic processes, it proposes a socially and environmentally regenerative mannequin that helps coastal communities whereas addressing microplastic air pollution.
David McGill (above) presents Ruvi Acoustic Tile, a slip-cast ceramic wall tile designed to enhance the acoustic and sensory high quality of public infrastructure such because the London Underground. Impressed by historical Roman acoustic rules, Ruvi integrates Helmholtz resonators right into a modular ceramic type that dampens focused noise frequencies with out counting on artificial foams. Sturdy, domestically manufacturable and made out of 97% pure supplies, Ruvi reframes ceramics as a everlasting, human-centred acoustic resolution for modern city environments.
Collectively, these initiatives exemplify Floor Design Present 2026’s function as a platform for experimentation, crucial pondering and sustainable innovation. By supporting rising designers on the forefront of fabric analysis, the present continues to form the way forward for floor design the place magnificence, efficiency and accountability coexist.
To vote for who you suppose ought to win the rising expertise class in Floor Design Present Awards please go to the web site Rising Expertise – Floor Design Present 2026
Floor Design Present 2026 takes place on the Enterprise Design Centre, London, bringing collectively international materials pioneers, producers and designers redefining the constructed surroundings.
