Design Lab #13 Material Legacies

About

The Design Lab #13 exhibition „Material Legacies“, developed in cooperation with design researchers from the Matters of Activity. Image Space Material Cluster of Excellence at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, explores contingencies and disruptions between traditional crafts and most recent developments at the interface of materials research, design, technology and architecture.

The exhibition project brings together artefacts from the Kunstgewerbemuseum’s (Museum of Decorative Arts) collection with work-in-progress installations by designers and researchers from the Cluster of Excellence to initiate a dialogue about the historical, current and future conditions under which materiality unfolds.

The Material Past, Present and Future

By surveying a range of different materials and techniques, the exhibition problematises unsustainable pasts and presents while also formulating notions of possible material futures. This occurs through the examination of shape-shifting surfaces and phase-shifting textiles and of the processes of calcification, mineralization and sedimentation.

Materials in Context

The project considers each of the exhibits within its socio-cultural, economic and political context. The focus was on questions such as:

• How can we make better use of left-over materials?
• What can we learn from the transfer of biological processes to the processing of materials?
• What do materials and artefacts teach us about our relationship with the environment?