Plektonik Structural Textiles column – continuous wooden ›Active Yarns‹ 40 mm diameter loops. Copyright: Daniel Suárez & Natalija Miodragović
Cluster Members Beyer, Miodragović, Mossé and Suárez Publish in Proceedings of the UIA World Congress of Architects Copenhagen 2023
The book provides new perspectives from leading researchers accentuating and examining the central role of the built environment in conceiving and implementing multifaceted solutions for the complex challenges of our understanding of planetary resources and circularity, revealing critical potentials for architecture and design to contribute in more informed and long-term ways to the urgent transition of our society. Bastian Beyer et. al. contributed with the article »Towards a Bacterially-Induced Textile Architecture« and Daniel Suárez and Natalija Miodragović an article on »Plektonik— Active Yarns for Adaptive Loop-Based Material Systems«.
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Poster Talk Series, HZK and CARMAH, 2023. Copyright: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
MoA Members Contribute to New Event Series Organized by HZK/CARMAH
On Wednesday, April 26th, the seminar series with the theme of WARP (Werkstatt für kulturelle Ausdrucksweisen und Recherche in der Praxis) will kick off with a tour through the exhibition »DAOULA | sheen« by one of the Co-curators and MoA Member Laurence Douny. MoA Pre-Doctoral Researcher Yoonha Kim will hold a talk on »Wearing Sallim« on May 3rd, and MoA Associated Member Lucy Norris about »Regenerative Fibre Cultures: Fashioning New threads of Connection« on June 14th. The talks and workshops will explore diverse forms of material knowledge in research, material culture, curation, technology, and art and are organized by Magdalena Buchczyk from the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH). They take place Wednesdays 4–5.30 pm (CEST) either at Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik or digitally on Zoom.
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Self-Shaping Textiles. Design: studioeins
On 24 November at Kunstgewerbemuseum
The Round Table »Self-Shaping Textiles at the Intersection of Fashion, Architecture and Technology« kicked off a new format series accompanying the exhibition »Design Lab #13: Material Legacies« at Kunstgewerbemuseum. The Round Tables represent each of the exhibiting project in a moderated dialogue with guests from different disciplines. The format brings a variety of perspectives to the exhibited works, its material legacies and entangled discourses and invites the public to engage. On November 24th Lorenzo Guiducci and Agata Kycia discussed their work with the architect Giovanni Betti and the fashion sociologist Antonella Giannone.
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Poster Material Legacies. Image: Dietrich Polenz and the Experimental Surgery Lab, 2020
Exhibition at Kunstgewerbemuseum
The exhibition »Design Lab #13: Material Legacies« at Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin explored contingencies and ruptures between traditional crafts and the most recent developments at the crossroads of material research, design, engineering, and architecture. It brought together artifacts from the museum’s collection with work-in-progress installations by designers and researchers from the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity. Image Space Material« in order to initiate a dialogue about the historical, contemporary, and future conditions under which materiality unfolds.
By engaging with a series of different materials and techniques the exhibition encompassed both the problematization of unsustainable pasts and presents as well as the imagination of speculative material futures. Taking materiality as a starting point, each of the exhibits investigated its sociocultural, economic, and political context in order to disentangle the multiple interrelations that arise from and with materials. more
By engaging with a series of different materials and techniques the exhibition encompassed both the problematization of unsustainable pasts and presents as well as the imagination of speculative material futures. Taking materiality as a starting point, each of the exhibits investigated its sociocultural, economic, and political context in order to disentangle the multiple interrelations that arise from and with materials. more
Poster PhD presentations 2022. Layout: Ada Favaron
Doctoral Presentations at the MoA Retreat 2022
The 2022 presentation of the Doctoral Program »Matters of Activity« at the MoA Retreat in September at Landgut Stober was both a review and an outlook of the doctoral research conducted at the Cluster between 2020 and 2022. Under the title »Scaling Matters: From the Lab to the Field, «Pre-Doctoral Researchers at varying stages of their research — from the very beginning to the final phase of their theses — presented their heterogeneous work whilst continuing to negotiate common themes, methods, questions and tools. The format combined talks and an exhibition and invited MoA Members to engage individually with the presentation and a selection of their research objects.
Thanks to everyone involved for making possible this all-around successful event. Enjoy some visual impressions of the exhibition, as well as the talks and have a look at the booklet.
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MoA Exhibition »Stretching Materialities«. Copyright: Offshore Design
Hidden Activities in Objects and Spaces at Tieranatomisches Theater
Matter is dead? Objects are lifeless? Think again! In the exhibition »Stretching Materialities« the liveliness and activity of matter could be experienced in a completely new way. From September 16th, 2021 to March 4th, 2022, the Tieranatomisches Theater in Berlin became an interactive playground: an actual cloud levitated in the middle of the room, reacting to body heat and movement, hovering around the visitors like a strange creature. Stones revealed their weathering as a dynamic process of change. Large willow structures, carefully co-crafted by humans and computers, were interwoven with the inhabitable space. Korean ›durumagi‹, a silk overcoat connecting the digital and physical realm, vibrated on the visitors’ skin as they interacted with diverse materials. Walking through the room with VR headsets on, visitors could enter a glass elevator and travel straight down into the materials presented – into the CT scan of a stone or high up into the clouds to interact with air molecules.
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»Architectural Yarns«. Photo: Michelle Mantel. Copyright: Matters of Activity
The Research group »Architectural Yarns« explores the possibilities of ecological regeneration and repair in architecture through textiles – by making temporary, provisional structures from fibrous, biological materials. Some of these are plants such as flax or linen, which are being rediscovered as a building material in today´s ecological crisis. Others emphasize the temporality of textiles and their climate modulating qualities using Phase Change Materials to create soft structures and thermal boundaries in the interior space. Architectural Yarns are a design framework for temporal and adaptive textile interventions within existing built space that question fixed spatial arrangements and provide variability in (re)use.
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Wild silk wrapper from the Marka Dafing in Safané, Burkina Faso (showing the sheen). Video still from the film installation at the exhibition »DAOULA | Sheen. West-African Wild Silk On Its Way« (Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin). Film installation by Thabo Thindi with film material from Salif Sawadog and others.
West-African Textile Craft Meets European Science and Design
Schematic drawing of a part of a warping board. Source: Joachim Jungius, »Texturæ Contemplatio«, fol. 55r; in: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek – Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, Martin Fogel collection of Zettelkasten, folder: Ms XLII, 1923: delta 28 © Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek - Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek; Public Domain.