Activities
Filter
25.4.2024–28.11.2024
From Mono-Material to Multi-Performance
MoA Member Heidi Jalkh and Angie Dub New Bauhaus Earth Fellows
We are delighted that MoA Associated Member Heidi Jalkh has been awarded one of the 2024 Bauhaus Earth Fellowships together with Argentinian colleague Angie Dub. Congratulations! In their project »From Mono-Material to Multi-Performance« materials designer Heidi Jalkh and environmental architect Angie Dub will focus on advancing a bioceramic material made at ambient temperature from shellfish industry waste. Through this work, they will build on 10 years of experience in materials experimentation. The fellowship will enable critical milestones towards certification for application by prototyping and testing mono-material gradients in collaboration with RWTH Aachen. At the same time, Heidi and Angie will work with Bauhaus Earth to demonstrate potential applications of the material in 1:1 architectural fragments in Berlin and Buenos Aires.
more
1.9.2024–30.11.2024
Syntopische Architekturen
Neue Podcast-Folge der Serie »Exzellent Erklärt« mit Karola Dierichs und Robert Stock
In Folge 48 der Podcastserie »Exzellent Erklärt« erwartet die Zuhörer:innen ein inspirierender Austausch zu der Frage, wie die Materialien, die in der direkten Umgebung und ihren Kreisläufen vorkommen, das Bauen der Zukunft mitgestalten können. Journalistin Larissa Vassilian hat mit Cluster-Mitgliedern Karola Dierichs und Robert Stock über ihr Projekt »Syntopic Architectures« gesprochen, das darauf abzielt, natürliche Strukturen in die Architektur zu integrieren, die in Verbindung zu dem Ort stehen, an dem gebaut wird. Ein Beispiel dafür ist das Arbeiten mit Käferholz, also mit Holz, das vom Borkenkäfer befallen wurde.
3.9.2024–1.1.2025
Call for Papers: Minimal Machines
Cultures of Mixed Reality for Architectural and Construction Robotics
Minimal machines are understood as experimental approaches to kinetic processes in an age of robotics, where both hardware and software are reduced to their essential minimum. Cluster members Karola Dierichs and Karin Krauthausen together with Glenda Caldwell (Queensland University of Technology, Australia) and Dagmar Reinhardt (University of Sydney, Australia) aim to edit a Topical Collection reflecting on the rapidly emerging field of Mixed Reality (MR) in architecture, considering not only its technological aspects but also its cultural and human-centered implications. They invite contributions from the fields of Computational Design and Construction as well as the Humanities.
5.9.2024
Ars Electronica 2024
Projects by Anna Schäffner and Clemens Winkler Exhibited in the 45th edition of the Festival
This year's Ars Electronica Festival in Linz featured projects by Cluster Members. Anna Schäffner's project »Soft Collision« (2024) was shown as part of the S+T+ARTs Prize. Meet the Artist sessions provided inspiring moments of exchange and debate with a diverse audience. Clemens Winkler's students of the MA Studio »Spiel&Objekt« at the Ernst Busch University of Theatre Arts Berlin were nominated for this year's Ars Electronica Campus Award. Congratulations on this honor!
26.9.2024–5.12.2024
Microbes and Materials
Lecture Series Organized by Anna A. Gorbushina
The public lecture series, organized by the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und —prüfung (BAM) and the Freie Universität Berlin (FU), will focus on the interactions of living organisms with materials. The five lectures by internationally renowned experts will be in English and take place on Thursdays from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. starting on September 26th. They will be moderated by MoA member Anna A. Gorbushina (BAM&FU), Liane G. Benning (GFZ&FU), and Matthias Rillig (FU Berlin). The lecture series takes place at BAM headquarters and Branch Adlershof. All lectures can be attended in person or followed digitally.
17.10.2024
Blasted Seascapes
Two New Articles by Rasa Weber
Two articles by Cluster member Rasa Weber were published recently: In kritische berichte. Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte, Rasa writes about »Queer Reefs – A Queer Ecological Journey into Blasted Seascapes«. Moreover, »Of Other Reefs: Designing Habitats in Blasted Seascapes« has been published by Cambridge University Press. Both publications are open access.
22.10.2024–28.1.2025
Which Pasts are Valued and Why?
New Lecture Series Kicks Off on 22 October
Which pasts are valued and why? How has this changed historically and in what ways is it changing today? What gets to count as heritage and in what broader global and local transformations is this entangled? How can heritage be proactively changed to help address pressing social, political, and environmental problems, including those of decolonization, cultural conflict, and climate crisis? And how do the arts, humanities, and social sciences need to be done differently to comprehend and enable the potential of such transformations? The new lecture series, organized by »inherit. heritage in transformation«, kicks off on October 22nd with an introduction by MoA member Sharon Macdonald and Eva Ehninger, directors of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg.
1.11.2024
In a Seashell
Workshop with Angie Dub and Heidi Jalkh at Berlin Science Week 2024 Fully Booked - Save Your Last Spot on the Waiting List!
We're thrilled to share that we will contribute to this year's Berlin Science Week with a workshop about connecting marine-based industries and construction for more sustainable architecture. Each year, over 10 million tonnes of shells—mostly from oysters, clams, scallops, and mussels—are discarded as waste despite their high calcium carbonate content. How could we make better use of the potential of these ingenious materials? Let’s explore this together! With inputs from MoA member Christiane Sauer, Kika Brockstedt from the material data platform revalu, and many more.
1.11.2024–2.11.2024
Metempyschosis
Dimitra Almpani-Lekka, Natalija Miodragović, and Emma Sicher are Part of Talk Series on Mycelium
The exhibition and talks aim at celebrating the intersection of art, design, science, and ecology, and at exploring how the process of mycofabrication – using fungi as a tool for manufacturing – and multispecies design can reshape our perceptions, inspire new ways of thinking and reconnect us to the environment. Metempsychosis, the idea of mind transmigration, serves as a metaphor for the transformative journey of creating with living mycelium, which not only serves as a medium but actively participates in the creative process. Cluster members Dimitra Almpani-Lekka, Natalija Miodragović, and Emma Sicher will contribute to the talk series on November 2nd from 5 pm in Berlin-Mitte.
5.11.2024
The Whispering World: Words by a Silent Sea
Exhibition by Rasa Weber Opens at Berlin Science Week
We're delighted that MoA associated member Rasa Weber will be part of the Blue Talk: »Science and Design for Marine Ecosystem Restoration« at this year's Berlin Science Week. The event is part of the preparation for the Third United Nations Ocean Conference jointly organized by France and Costa Rica (June 2025 - Nice, France) and takes place at the French Embassy in Berlin. The panel discussion will be followed by the official opening of the exhibition »The Whispering World: Words by a Silent Sea«, showcasing Rasa's work in developing a prototype of an artificial reef that provides a substrate and structure for pioneer organisms to form a habitat.
5.11.2024
The Future of Green Chemistry
Fardin and Siamak Gholami's Co-Filter Project Finalist in Pitch Event
Discover the future of green chemistry at a live pitch event! Unveil the synergy between society, sustainability, chemistry, and innovation. Watch, vote, and engage. We warmly invite you to this pitching slam, where the scientific publisher Wiley and the Berlin chemistry innovation ecosystem greenCHEM will host a showcase of cutting-edge chemistry innovations. Fardin and Siamak Gholami's »Co-Filter« project has been selected as a finalist between »5 great project ideas«, where chemistry can be the basis of an impactful application in society. Join the event in person or virtually at Wiley's Berlin office! The event is part of Berlin Science Week 2024.
7.11.2024
Battle of the Brains
The Science Slam of the Berlin Clusters of Excellence
Slammin’ like there’s no tomorrow – at the Science Slam of the Berlin Clusters of Excellence, researchers try everything to entertain their audience, regardless of whether the subject is e.g. mathematics, neuroscience, or active material. For Matters of Activity, Associated Member Heidi Jalkh will present her latest research under the title »From Awe to Wonder - Designing Nature Inspired Materials«. Join us on November 7th at Roadrunner's Paradise Club, it will be a great evening! The event is part of Berlin Science Week 2024.
7.11.2024–8.11.2024
Figures, Narratives, and Politics of DIY in Modern European Media Culture
MoA Members Contribute to Conference Organized by ExC Temporal Communities
»If you want a thing done well, do it yourself«: Figures, Narratives, and Politics of DIY in Modern European Media Culture - this is the title of the conference, organized by Michael Bies (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin), Michael Gamper and Alix Ricau for the Cluster of Excellence »Temporal Communities« on November 7th and 8th, 2024. Cluster member Patricia Ribault (Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis) will contribute with a talk entitled »To Make, or Not to Make, That Is the Question« and Karin Krauthausen (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) with a talk about »The Hut as Improvised Structure and Border Experience«.
14.11.2024
Sensing Common Grounds. Towards Collaborative Speculation
Roundtable Questions Future Role of Embodied Knowledges, Situated Inquiry and Extra-Academic Encounters
The roundtable addresses current challenges at the intersection of critical humanities scholarship and design research by discussing nuanced means of knowing and making. It attends to collaborative speculation in inter- and transdisciplinary contexts to sense and unearth common grounds through the reality of the ecological predicament. Together with our guests, we ask about the narratives, prototypes, norms, materials and media that hold knowledge (and non-knowledge) of such speculations and public imaginaries: How to unlearn and unmake dominant modes of worldmaking by cutting across disciplines, foregrounding embodied knowledges, situated inquiry and extra-academic encounters?
15.11.2024–16.11.2024
Disability, Technology and Change
Workshop Organized by Cluster Professor Robert Stock and Magdalena Zdrodowska, Jagiellonian University
Recently, there has been growing scholarship in design, art, technology, and science regarding their relationships with disability, thus exploring issues of materiality as well as complex embodiment and cognitive difference. In opposition to previous narratives, these novel and critical accounts center on disability as a creative force, an embodied experience that fosters innovation and allows for new affordances of already known and circulating objects, practices and knowledges. This workshop, organized by Cluster member Robert Stock, Junior Professor for Cultures of Knowledge, and Magdalena Zdrodowska, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Audiovisual Arts of the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, aims to challenge and suggest to pluralise the established notions of the normal, normalcy or normativity in the history and theory of technology and design.
21.11.2024–23.11.2024
Before the Object. Material Histories, Infrastructures and Ecologies
Workshop Organized by Cluster Member Kaja Ninnis Together with Ursula Ströbele
What happens before matter becomes art – what happens before the object? This workshop at Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig, November 21st-23rd, 2024, is dedicated to exploring not artworks but the »stuff« artworks are made of and the ecological implications of their procurement, processing, and transport, aiming at uncovering what Laura Turner Igoe has called »the ecological unconscious of art matter.« The workshop is organized by Kaja Ninnis (HU Berlin / Matters of Activity) and Ursula Ströbele (HBK Braunschweig).
21.11.2024–22.11.2024
Biomimetics, Bioinspired, Biorobotics: Discourses on Nature in the 21st century
Workshop Organized by Michael Friedman and Marco Tamborini
The workshop aims to explore the new discourses, metaphors, and conceptual approaches in which the research on biomimetics as well as on bioinspired and biorobotics materials is embedded. By bringing together HPS experts in biomimetics, bioinspired, and biorobotics disciplines, we seek to understand how formative these discourses and metaphors are. We aim to explore how they reflect older traditions, identify the actions that support the use of such concepts, and examine how they contribute to a new conceptual and philosophical landscape in the 21st century.
27.11.2024
How to Hold Things
Rahel Kesselbrink spricht im Rahmen der »Critical Ecologies« Vortragsreihe
»Critical Ecologies« ist eine für und mit Szenographiestudierenden organsierte Veranstaltungsreihe der ZHdK Zürich und der HfBK Dresden. Ihr Fokus liegt darauf, gemeinsam ein ökologisches und nachhaltiges Denken, Forschen und Handeln in den darstellenden Künsten (weiter) zu entwickeln. Am 27. November gibt MoA PhD Kandidatin Rahel Kesselbrink unter dem Titel »How to hold things: Reparatur, Regeneration und Rewilding als künstlerische Praktiken in versehrten Ökosystemen« Einblicke in ihre Forschung.
1.9.2025–5.9.2025
Morphing Structural Materials – From Biology to Physics to Architecture
Advanced Course at International Centre for Mechanical Sciences in Udine, September 2025 – Register Now!
Matter is rarely completely static: often matter can morph. This is true for all living systems that grow, adapt, and change shape. Indeed, cells divide, leaves and fungi grow, octopuses transform, and wings reshape to control flight. But it is also true that bread rises and that pasta swells. While morphing is omnipresent in the living, it is not confined to it. Harnessing morphing capacities has many potential applications, from machines and robots to architecture. The goal of this course with lectures by MoA members Peter Fratzl and Karola Dierichs, is to review the current and fast-growing knowledge about structural materials that change shape or develop spontaneous internal stresses that improve their properties.