A material practice in Park Royal.

Victor studied chemistry, then took an MSc in physics, then a PhD in computational neuroscience. Then clay, taken up first as a way of making. The science taught him to see systems and loops.

For three years he worked with clay recovered from London building sites and co-founded a social enterprise that built with it.

Taipa Lab is the next step. Taipa is the earth-building tradition: rammed earth and cob. Lab is for experiment and open research.

It is a material lab and, increasingly, a design lab: the research is meant to end in things that get made and used. Today most of the work is material testing, and ceramics is the only output that is fully developed. The pieces, and the commissioned objects we want to make with the places a material comes from, are described in Made and in Work with us.

Park Royal is one of Europe’s largest industrial estates, around 450 hectares and roughly 2,000 businesses. The waste streams sit within walking distance of the studio: London construction clay, wood ash, glass cutting waste, marble and stone dust, coffee grounds, concrete washout water, and reinforcing fibres including recycled plastic, human hair, and textile offcuts.

Studio: 1-2 Minerva Road, Park Royal, London NW10 6HJ. Contact: studio [at] victorpedrosaceramics.com.