EDIT SZABÓ
Artist · Designer · Researcher
Born in Transylvania · Educated in Budapest · Based in Sweden
My practice investigates how silicate materials connect environmental, cultural and architectural systems, revealing new possibilities through transformation.
I work across artistic research, architecture and environmental material research, exploring how materials acquire new meanings, functions and forms of agency when they enter into new relationships with people, places, histories and ecological processes.
Rather than treating ceramics as an isolated discipline, I see silicate materials as a way of understanding the world - one that connects geology, architecture, culture and environmental change through material transformation.
Following Curiosity
I have never been interested in materials as isolated objects.
What has always fascinated me is how they change - through fire, time, use and the relationships they enter into.
Growing up in Transylvania, I spent much of my childhood outdoors, collecting different soils, sands and stones, comparing them, mixing them and watching how they behaved. At the time, I wasn't thinking about ceramics. I was simply curious about why materials that looked so similar could become something completely different.
That curiosity has never really changed.
Over the years it led me from geology to silicate materials, from university to factories, from architectural conservation to environmental research. Looking back, I realise I wasn't following a career plan. I was following questions.
Learning by Following Curiosity
I've always learned by moving closer to the places where knowledge already exists.
University taught me the language of silicate materials.
Factories became another university, teaching me how materials behave in production and how knowledge accumulates through making.
Architectural conservation taught me that materials also carry time.
Working with architects expanded my attention from objects to environments.
Today, collaborations with scientists, engineers and local communities continue that same journey.
Why Silicate Materials?
For me, ceramics has never been the real subject.
Silicate materials form most of the Earth's crust. They are the materials of landscapes, buildings, cities and everyday life. Clay, brick, porcelain, glass and stone all belong to the same geological family, connecting natural processes with architecture and culture.
What fascinates me is that these same materials also hold enormous potential for addressing contemporary environmental challenges. They move naturally between geology, architecture, infrastructure and environmental systems.
Working with silicates allows me to move freely between artistic research, environmental questions and the built environment without feeling that I am changing disciplines.
From Objects to Relationships
At the beginning, I was mostly interested in what materials could do.
How can ceramics shape sound?
How can they transmit light?
How can industrial waste become a new material?
Over time, another question gradually became more important.
What relationships can materials create?
Between people and places.
Between history and the future.
Between architecture and climate.
Increasingly, I have come to see objects not as the destination of my practice, but as evidence of a larger investigation into how new possibilities emerge when relationships are reorganised.
Why It Matters Today
Over time, I have become less interested in isolated objects or isolated disciplines.
The questions I care about seem to exist somewhere in between: between industry and nature, history and innovation, architecture and ecology, art and science.
Silicate materials become a common language through which different forms of knowledge can meet, challenge one another and occasionally reveal something new.
Perhaps that is why collaboration has become such an important part of my practice. New possibilities rarely emerge from a single perspective. They appear when different ways of understanding the world are brought into relationship.
Looking Forward
Today my work increasingly brings together artistic research, architecture and environmental material research.
I enjoy collaborating with architects, scientists, engineers and local communities because each brings another way of understanding the same questions.
I don't expect every project to provide an answer. I hope each one asks a better question than the last.
If you would like to explore the practice in greater depth, you can download a Practice Profile outlining the research trajectory, material investigations, collaborations, teaching and professional experience behind the work.
