Climate

Material Form Function | More-Than-Human | Biodesign | Fungi/Mycelium | Rubber | Water | Climate | Circular Economies On July 12th 2024, the exhibition and research project »Matter of South. Biomaterial Cultures from Latin America« opened its doors. Its curators  Heidi Jalkh, Gisela Pozzetti and Valentina Aliaga Vargas are investigating to which extent the development of biomaterials can create new relationships between people and their environment in the future. What alternatives can there be to our extractivist practices? In this round table discussion with the three curators and further players, on July 17th, you can find out more about the background and vision of the »Matter of South« initiative. more

Material Form Function | More-Than-Human | Fungi/Mycelium | Bacteria | Tree Bark | Climate Modern life is mainly built on concrete, glass and steel. Recently, however, these construction materials have been increasingly discussed due to their impact on emissions, waste production, and the climate crisis. In response to this, designers, architects, and other scholars investigate novel approaches to biomaterials, recycling options, and circular models of fabrication and construction. The aim is to form symbiotic alliances with fungi, beetle-infested trees, bacteria, or residual materials and to acknowledge the surprising potentials of these unconventional collaborators. Can elements of nature thus be understood as equal partners in construction, architecture, and the design of daily objects? We cordially invite you to this workshop on June 5th, 2024 at Berlinische Galerie, to discuss these symbiotic practices as they hint at other collaborative futures beyond resource extraction. more

Material Form Function | Climate | More-Than-Human | Air | Water | Publications Elementare Ekstasen überschwemmen, erodieren und evaporieren die wohlsortierten Grenzziehungen zwischen Technik, Umwelt und Mensch. Als Neuverortung im Spannungsfeld medienökologischer, neomaterialistischer und technikfeministischer Theoriebildung sondiert Léa Perraudin all jene Widerständigkeiten und Un/Verfügbarkeiten, die von techno-kapitalistisch protegierten Operationen nicht zu tilgen sind. more

Climate | Cellulose | Biofilm | Collactive Materials | Science Communication | Prototype / Model | Speculative Design | Yarns/Fibers Gestaltet das Futurium Lab selbst mit! In der öffentlichen Workshopreihe »OPEN LAB ABEND: Materialzukünfte besuchen« spekuliert ihr darüber, aus welchen Materialien die Welt von morgen gemacht sein könnte. Die Workshopreihe umfasst 4 Termine und findet von März bis Juni im Futurium statt. Forschende von »Matters of Activity« (MoA) geben euch einen Einblick in ihre Arbeit. Davon ausgehend entwickelt ihr Zukunftsszenarien und gestaltet Prototypen, die im Anschluss zusammen mit Objekten aus der MoA-Forschung im Lab ausgestellt werden. Begleitet werdet ihr dabei vom spekulationserfahrenen Team von »CollActive Materials« - ab 14, keine Vorkenntnisse oder besondere Skills nötig! It’s getting hot in here... In diesem ersten Workshop geht es darum, wie wir mit smarten Materialien die Städte der Zukunft gestalten können. Im Sommer machen steigende Temperaturen, Metall und Beton das Leben in der Innenstadt für alle Bewohnenden immer mehr zur Herausforderung. Welche Materialien schaffen Abhilfe in überhitzten Städten? more

Material Form Function | Cellulose | Collactive Materials | Science Communication | Biodesign | Speculative Design | Climate | Forest | Prototype / Model | Tree Bark | Textiles | Fungi/Mycelium »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. more

Material Form Function | Air | Climate What does climate accountability look like for architecture? In an online exhibition curated by Arièle Dionne-Krosnick at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), the participants in the »2022 Toolkit for Today: Carbon Present« seminar and the »2022 Doctoral Research Residency Program«, such as Cluster member Iva Rešetar, were invited to collaboratively re-read objects from the CCA collections in ways that highlight how carbon shapes our present built environment. »Researchers generated dynamic terms to frame how we have historically engaged with and continue to manage carbon: to regulate design expertise, to shape social and lived experience, to be comfortable, and to relate to (and profit from) built and natural environments« (CCA). more

Material Form Function | Air | Science Communication | Climate | Cloud | Collactive Materials Clustermitglied und CollActive Materials Co-Projektleiter Martin Müller wurde nach der Eröffnung von »Airbound« am 19. Oktober 2023 im CLB im Aufbauhaus zur Ausstellung interviewt. »Die Luft spielt eine existenzielle Rolle in der globalen Klimakrise. Die Ausstellung soll die Aufmerksamkeit darauf lenken, dass mögliche Zukünfte sich auch an der Luft entscheiden, an unserem Verständnis davon, was es bedeutet zu atmen, mit der Luft zu leben. Wir sind ›airbound‹ – luftverbunden.«. Mehr zur Ausstellung und das ganze Interview gibt es im Tagesspiegel vom 22. Oktober 2023. more

Symbolic Material | Publications | Climate The year 2022 was the year of »climate extremes«, concludes the report of the European Climate Observatory. The concentration of CO2 and methane in the earth's atmosphere is the highest it has been for millennia. Mitigation measures such as emissions reduction or reforestation remain disappointingly ineffective. It seems almost impossible to keep the global temperature rise below the critical two-degree mark. The habitability of the earth is at stake.  It is time for an ideological critique of today's predominant imperatives of climate rescue: neo-romantic ecology on the one hand and geoengineering on the other. Both approaches want to return to a nature that does not exist anymore – and perhaps never did. A critical comment by Martin Müller in the FAZ. more

Weaving | Filtering | Cutting | Material Form Function | Object Space Agency | Doctoral Program | Climate | Haptics | More-Than-Human | Ocean | Robotics | Textiles | Tree Bark | Wild Silk | XR | Water | Science Communication 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. more

Material Form Function | Air | Circular Economies | Climate | More-Than-Human | Teaching | Sand The lecture series takes up the ambiguous role of materials in future-making practices along with the possible geo and bio-political precarity they may generate. Different materials from sand, water, or air to living cells and whole ecosystems are the objects and interface of a range of technologies that generate images of the future. Their probabilistic methods prepare the ideational and physical ground for large and small-scale design interventions (e.g., climate-resilient infrastructures). Register now and take part in the lecture series that continues until July 18th, every Monday 4.15 pm. more

Material Form Function | Bauhaus | Climate From 5-6 March 2022, the digital conference »Re: New European Bauhaus. For A Just Design of Climate Politics« took place. It navigated critical perspectives on the European Green Deal and the New European Bauhaus. The virtual program of talks, discussions, and workshops aimed to explore institutional, artistic, and designerly strategies to utilise the creative fields’ response-ability and agency for climate justice in European politics. MoA Co-Director Claudia Mareis will gave a lecture within the Panel »Art, Architecture, Design, and the Climate Crisis: Old Bauhaus Politics« on March 5th, 3-5 pm. more

Object Space Agency | Stretching Materialities | Air | Climate | Cloud | More-Than-Human | Sensing – Vibrations | Stone | Textiles | Willow | XR | Performance 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. more

Weaving | Material Form Function | Bacteria | Biofilm | Cellulose | Climate | Prototype / Model | Yarns/Fibers The workshop »Material as Environmental Device« on September 10th, 2020 gathers researchers and practitioners from the fields of architecture, ecological anthropology and the natural sciences to discuss the status of the material as an active element of environmental design on the basis of past and contemporary buildings and current research in the Cluster »Matters of Activity«. Three thematic sessions – »Materials and Environments«, »Essential Material« and »Active Skins« – focus on different aspects of material activity, addressing design and production techniques, ecological and cultural implications and the prospects of climate-responsive architectures. more

Climate | Willow | Stretching Materialities We are our environment. To comprehend this inseparability, other than human experiences are to be imagined. Creating a new habitat of active architectures is a negotiation between conservation, regeneration and innovation. If we look at the inherited city, clothing, built and woven environment, atmosphere and techno-sphere as a multi-scale homeostatic process of conservation, other ecologies are to be included to complete the conservation. For ›matter as a condensation of response-ability‹ new perspectives of processes are needed for the innovation. more

Air | Cloud | Climate | Stretching Materialities The exhibition space can also be understood as a space for processes metabolizing substances and forms. As a blob-like organism, a relational concept of activity and space makes it necessary to experimentally experience not only human and object-related perspectives, but also their energetic and material permeations. Hereby, it is more likely to link environments known to metabolisms from a human-scale perspective, such as volcanic grounds, to the exhibition space. Metabolic formations such as sediments or traces are in constant intentional and unintentional interaction with techniques and at the same time determine the energetic and material modes of the exhibition space. How can we make these modes more tangible for critical futures acting as systems designers? more

Doctoral Program | Climate | Fungi/Mycelium | Water | More-Than-Human The aim of Dimitra’s research is to investigate emerging architectural design protocols of activating the building envelope with the treatment of water in order to restore and promote ecosystemic functions and local biodiversity. In this framework the building envelope is approached as a voluminous, programmatic and infrastructural space of opportunity for integrating the building into the metabolic processes of the ecosystem. The envelope is explored as a porous membrane rather than a barrier, a vehicle for mutually beneficial human and non-human symbiosis that allows for material and energy negotiations and exchanges between the outside and the inside. Therefore, the envelope is re-thought as a potential space of communing for all local species. The actuator of the envelope is water, one of the most vital resources for the sustenance of ecosystemic activity. This approach requires the study of water related functions, properties and phenomena across different scales (macro- (urban fabric), meso- (building/device), micro-(study of microorganisms and properties of matter). With the use of dynamic design tools, the architectural design is formed by the dynamics and temporalities of water. Alliances between the fields of biotechnology, natural sciences and environmental engineering as well as humanities, landscape architecture, animal aided design and biomimetics are employed to incorporate biological growth and water treatment methods in an architectural design method that addresses the topic of co-habitation in contemporary cities, especially in the context of pressing climate related problems such as droughts, floods and the contamination of natural water resources. Over the last years Dimitra has been working in Berlin in the field of Landscape Architecture with a focus on the creation of socially and environmentally sustainable public spaces. She joined the Cluster in 2021 and is working on the Myko.Plektonik project in parallel to her PhD, exploring fungal mycelium as a co-designer in the architectural context. more

Biodesign | Climate | More-Than-Human | Water How might we (re)learn ways of living well in re-wetted landscapes, develop appropriate technologies of making with local resources, and speculate on entangled emergent futures in watery worlds? A collaboration between Charlett Wenig, an interdisciplinary material researcher, and Lucy Norris, a social anthropologist working in the field of design, this project looks at the potential of peatland resources (especially reed canary grass Phalaris arundinacea, and water sedge Carex aquatilis) as materials in the proposed wetlands of northern and eastern Germany. more