Charlett Wenig, Bark Sphere, 2021. Copyright: Alexander Magerl
Matters of Activity und CollActive Materials starten Kooperation mit Futurium Lab
»Matters of Activity« und das Experimentallabor für Wissenschaftskommunikation »CollActive Materials« starteten im März eine neue Veranstaltungsreihe im Futurium Lab. Unter dem Titel »Materialzukünfte besuchen« finden über vier Monate vier Workshops statt, die die Forschung des Clusters mit der Zivilgesellschaft zusammenbringen und in denen gemeinsam über Materialzukünfte spekuliert wird. Begleitet werden die Veranstaltungen von einer temporären Ausstellung im Futurium Lab, die ab 4. Mai besucht werden kann.
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Syntopia. Copyright: Jihae Lee, weißensee school of art and design berlin
Final Review of MoA Design Research Studio
We hereby cordially invite you to the final review of the MoA Design Research Studio »Syntopia—Harvesting the Forest«, which will take place on Tuesday, July 18th, in Room 2.03 at weißensee school of art and design berlin. The studio led by Cluster Professor Karola Dierichs, investigated how materials collected in the forest can be formed into architectural structures. Such materials can for example be branches, leaves, moss, bark, grass, or even earth.
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Copyright: N Scot Unsplash
Robert Stock Talks at the Hybrid Symposium »Luso-Ecologies: More-Than-Human Complexities, Agency, and Resistance in the Lusophone Anthropocene« at University of Oxford
Following Mia Couto’s quote, places of ›nature‹ require us to think more than we would expect. While highlighting that those ›natural‹ places were fabricated through stories (and histories), Couto also contends that they are indeed ›fazedores‹ – makers – of so many other stories. Taking up these thoughts that resonate with Haraway’s claim to create novel stories and »stay with the trouble«, Robert Stock approaches the coastal line of Mozambique to learn about the ways in which mangrove forests intersect with the contemporary postcolonial condition of this country as part of the first panel starting Thursday, March 30th.
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Nursery stock of spruce (2+0) for afforestation. Credits: wikimedia commons / adapted by Matters of Activity
Robert Stock Gave Talk at EASST 2022 »The Politics of Technoscientific Futures«
In the EASST Conference »The Politics of Technoscientific Futures«, taking place in Madrid July 6th–9th, Cluster Member Robert Stock was part of the panel »ForeSTS«, which aimed to bring together STS perspectives on forests. His talk »Forests as Techno-Natures: Translating Digital Environmental Subjects« was closely related to the project »Active Trees – Knowledge, Technologies and Futures« as part of »Material Form Function«.
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Advanced Materials Design Based on Waste Wood and Bark
New Paper by Members of »Weaving« published in »Philosophical Transactions A«
Cluster members Charlett Wenig, Friedrich J. Reppe, Karin Krauthausen, Peter Fratzl and Michaela Eder together with colleagues published a paper in the journal »Philosophical Transactions A« by »The Royal Society«. Trees belong to the largest living organisms on Earth and plants in general are one of our main renewable resources. Wood as a material has been used since the beginning of humankind. Today, forestry still provides raw materials for a variety of applications, for example in the building industry, in paper manufacturing and for various wood products.
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Left: The Bark Sphere, Charlett Wenig with Johanna Hehemeyer-Cürten I MPI-CI and Alexander Magerl, 2021
Middle: The Bark Project Flexibilized, Charlett Wenig with Johanna Hehemeyer-Cürten I MPI-CI and Patrick Walter
Right: Charles Eisen’s allegorical engraving of the first hut (= Vitruvian hut). Frontispiece in: Marc Antoine Laugier, Essai sur l’architecture, Paris: Chez Duchesne […], 2. edition, 1755. ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Rar 1254, https://doi.org/10.3931/e-rara-128 / Public Domain Mark
»Syntopic Architectures« engages in structures for habitation, sourced from and embedded in the material cycles of a specific environment. The term ›syntopic‹ (noun: syntopy) has been coined by Luis Rene Rivas in 1964 and denotes the inhabitation of the same »macrohabitat« by »two or more related species«. It is a composition of the Greek words ›syn‹ meaning together and topos meaning place. To develop Syntopic Architectures thus means to create inhabitable structures with the place where they are built in.
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›One Big Green Thought‹
Repair, Regeneration and Rewilding as Artistic Practices in Damaged Environments
In her dissertation, Rahel investigates artistic practices, which are set in damaged environments and have plants, trees, and forests as their object of investigation. By analyzing selected case studies from the field of contemporary art and recent art history, the project aims to discuss arboreal politics, their medial modes of representation, and the epistemologies brought together in them
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Physical damage on the tree due to beetles and fungus. Left: Bark beetle galleries and larvae under the bark of a spruce tree. Middle: Bark beetle galleries on the sapwood of a spruce tree. Right: Other insect holes and brown rot streaks on spruce wood. Pelin Asa, MPICI, 2023.
Reversible Components from Low-grade Wood
Spruce forests in Europe face significant challenges from increasing bark beetle attacks, partly attributed to droughts and extreme weather conditions. Drawing from field research conducted in Feldbuch, Germany, this project analyses factors that lead to bark beetle outbreaks and their impact on the trees, local forests, and communities. As bark beetle infestations escalate, there is a growing focus on understanding their impact on trees and forests, yet research into beetle-affected wood and its potential applications in architecture and digital fabrication remains limited. This research aims to address this gap by identifying key questions surrounding beetle-infested wood and showcasing its potential for valorisation.
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