Source: Ellie Doney/Samuel Annett/Zoe Laughlin

Cabinet of curiosities: a ¡®multidisciplinary research club¡¯ in a former loading bay at UCL is home to some 1,500 samples of creativity-inspiring substances

University College London¡¯s new ¡°multidisciplinary research club¡± brings together an astonishing range of unexpected objects that curator and creative director Zoe Laughlin hopes can ¡°inspire curiosity and creativity¡±.

Among them are her own milk teeth, kept by her mother; a jar of fluorescent yellow paintball pellets; a sample of aerogel used in Nasa¡¯s jet propulsion laboratory to catch star dust; steel spun out to the silky fineness of human hair; a piece of Bakelite once owned by somebody¡¯s grandmother; and a chunk of Silly Putty.

There are also spoons made of different metals to test the theory that each gives food a slightly different taste and a collection of small cubes - one of Blu-Tack that someone had started to roll into a ball, another of white chocolate that had been nibbled by a mouse - showing how the edges and corners of different materials get chipped away.

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All form part of the materials library that Dr Laughlin and her two fellow directors have been assembling since 2005. It had its genesis in her doctoral studies at King¡¯s College London and was long kept hidden away in a basement there, although it was taken out occasionally for research, exhibitions and events. By 2010, she realised that the collection deserved much greater public prominence.

It now forms part of , located in a former loading bay that still incorporates a crane to bring up kit from underground workshops. Core funding comes from UCL¡¯s departments of engineering and of museums and public engagement. Unlike other libraries of materials, it is linked to a ¡°MakeSpace¡± where members - anyone working at UCL who has paid the ?20 registration fee and gone on an induction course - can come along and try things out. Dr Laughlin hopes to attract everyone from ¡°people looking at material culture and the philosophy of matter to chemists creating a new kind of plastic¡±. There will also be monthly open days for the general public.

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Martin Conreen, the institute¡¯s director of making and a senior lecturer in design at Goldsmiths, University of London, has worked as a shoemaker, silversmith and set and furniture designer.

He said he was fascinated by ¡°very common materials where we have only scratched the surface of their possible uses¡±, citing a centre in Lapland that makes buildings and instruments out of ice. He has himself donated some basalt thread, a safer alternative to fibreglass, to the collection.

Although the MakeSpace will be used by serious researchers, Mr Conreen hoped it would also be accessible to ¡°staff with hobbies such as building bikes or musical instruments¡±.

For the centre¡¯s third director Mark Miodownik, professor of materials and society at UCL, ¡°manipulating things into something else is central to what makes us human. Everything in the library is at the start of a journey, about to be made into something else, whereas most things in museums are at the end of a journey. Much of the stuff here comes out of people¡¯s bins, so we are elevating things we normally think of as crap. I hope innovation will flow out of bringing them together.¡±

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Given that ¡°the whole world is a materials library¡±, Dr Laughlin admitted that their ¡°living, breathing collection¡± is inevitably selective. Although some of its 1,500 items come from cutting-edge material scientists bringing in a sample of an important new process, it is equally common for friends, family or colleagues to turn up with something and say: ¡°Feel this, it¡¯s just incredibly soft!¡±

matthew.reisz@tsleducation.com