Activities
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Co-Weaving Biofilms, Bastian Beyer, Iva Rešetar, Moritz Liedtke, Regine Hengge, Installation for Bauhaus Museum Dessau, 2025, photo: Michelle Mantel. Copyright: Matters of Activity
10.4.2025–2.11.2025
Bauhaus Ecologies
Installation »Bacterial Cellulose: Co-Weaving Biofilms« Featured at Exhibition in Dessau
Was the historic Bauhaus interested in ecology? Presumably in a different context than today. The exhibition »Bauhaus Ecologies«, on view from April 11th to November 2nd, 2025 at Bauhaus Museum Dessau, explores approaches to ecological thinking in modern design. We are thrilled to share that the exhibition also features the installation »Bacterial Cellulose: Co-Weaving Biofilms« developed in the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity«. The project of architects Bastian Beyer and Iva Rešetar and microbiologist Regine Hengge presents the latest results of research at the interface between design, materials science, and biology.
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CONQ, Heidi Jalkh & Angie Dub
10.5.2025–23.11.2025
CONQ at Biennale Architettura 2025
Associated Member Heidi Jalkh Presents Marine Biobased Building Materials in Venice
Cluster member Heidi Jalkh and Angie Dub have been invited to contribute to the Biennale Architettura 2025, curated by Carlo Ratti. The theme of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition is »Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective«. Their project »CONQ – Marine biobased building materials«, will be part of the Arsenale Exhibition: Matter Makes Sense. The Venice Biennale will be open to the public from Saturday, May 10th to Sunday, November 23th, 2025.
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Corrosion Cast of Liver Vessels, Dietrich Polenz, 2023. Image: Igor Sauer, 2025
4.6.2025–12.10.2025
Vessels: Infrastructures of Life
Exhibition, Panels and Tour
Vessels are indispensable – for plants, animals, humans, and even our cities. As part of the ＿matter Festival 2025, this special exhibition at the Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité, curated by Igor M. Sauer and Navena Widulin, offers exciting insights into these often-hidden structures. It shows how these vessels function and how they can be visualized, used and reproduced. A particular focus lies on the connections between natural vessels and human-made networks, such as the regulation of temperature in buildings or the water and wastewater supply in cities.
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Ausstellungsansicht, WEtransFORM, Foto: David Ertl, 2025 © Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
6.6.2025–25.1.2026
WEtransFORM. On the Future of Building
Two Cluster Research Projects Contribute to the Exhibition at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn
We are delighted that two of the Cluster's research projects contribute to the exhibition »WEtransFORM. On the Future of Building« at Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, opening on June 5th, 2025. Fundamental design principles for a climate-friendly renewal of our building culture are on display with around 80 projects that deal with the challenges in an exemplary manner. Large-scale prototypes of the interdisciplinary research projects »Architectural Yarns« and »Structural Textiles« illustrate the potential of textile binding techniques such as knitting or weaving for flexible and reconfigurable architectural elements. Plant fibers from flax and willow, or biological materials such as fungal mycelium and wool, are processed into reconfigurable walls and components.
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Beetle Galleries in Spruce Wood. Photo: Pelin Asa, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Matters of Activity, 2024; Graphic Design: NODE Berlin Oslo
27.6.2025–23.11.2025
Symbiotic Wood
Exhibition, Symposium, Roundtable and Tour
Climate change and monocultures have left forests vulnerable to insects and fungi. Beetle-infested wood is deemed less valuable from a traditional human-centric perspective. The group show »Symbiotic Wood« at Kunstgewerbemuseum focuses on this ›more-than-human‹ material that is co-owned with other species. It features contributions by artists, designers, architects, and cultural historians. Exhibition extended until 23 November 2025!
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Inverse problem for fabrication: From a 3D model a deposition plan is optimized for a 3D printed plate, such that once dipped into water the plate deforms into the target shape. This is achieved by optimizing the shape of the plate and the orientation of the plastic deposition trajectories. Copyright: Thibault Tricard, Vincent Tavernier, David Jourdan, Cédric Zanni, Jonàs Martínez, Pierre-Alexandre Hugron, Fabrice Neyret, Camille Schreck, Sylvain Lefebvre
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.
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6.9.2025
+ Material Intelligence
Symposium in Venice
The symposium joins leading experts from materials science, the humanities and architecture with the goal to establish future directions in the field of active matter and material intelligence. Indeed, information may not only be stored and processed in digital systems or in neural networks, but in the structure of any material. Since a different structure corresponds to a change in property or functionality, structure is a repository of information. The symposium will discuss consequences for design and the arts as well as for technical systems such as architecture or soft robotics. There are a few spots left – register now!
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8.9.2025
Exzellentes Pub Quiz
Bei der September-Ausgabe wird Matters of Activity im Fokus stehen
Wir freuen uns sehr, euch zur fünften Folge der Pub-Quiz-Reihe der Berliner Exzellenzcluster am Montag, den 8. September, in die fahimi bar nach Kreuzberg einzuladen. An diesem spätsommerlichen Quizabend wird die Forschung von »Matters of Activity« mit einer dazu passenden Live-Performance im Fokus stehen. Fragen aus den Bereichen aller Berliner Cluster ergänzen den zweistündigen Rätselabend, der von Jochen Müller moderiert wird. Also, sucht Mitstreiterinnen, denkt euch Teamnamen aus und taucht ein in die wunderbare Welt der Forschung – wir freuen uns auf euch!
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MAKING facades host life with Dimitra Almpani-Lekka
10.9.2025
MAKING Facades Host Life
The new episode with Dimitra Almpani-Lekka explores how sponges and their porosity could hold the key to the future of architecture
Imagine a home whose surface absorbs rainwater like a sponge. This innovation could improve the abilities of urban areas to adapt to both heat and floods in the future. Don't miss the latest episode of MAKING_ where Dimitra Almpani-Lekka reveals how she takes the principles of sponges and applies them to clay tiles to create prototypes for bioreceptive facades and buildings.
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16.9.2025
MoA Co-Director Claudia Mareis appointed Research Commissioner at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
We are delighted to congratulate MoA Co-Director Claudia Mareis on her appointment as Research Commissioner at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The new Executive Board Commissioner will represent the office of Vice President for Research following the resignation of Prof. Christoph Schneider until a new appointment is made. Claudia Mareis would like to thank the university management for placing their trust in her. She believes that her experience of working across different disciplines at the Cluster will be extremely valuable in her new role.
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19.9.2025
Out of Hand. Active, Ambiguous and Unsteady Matters
MoA's Annual Conference on 19 Sep 2025, 9 am-9 pm at silent green Kulturquartier
In the face of the current ecological predicament, substantial ›matters‹ are progressively getting ›out of hand‹, and require critical attention to their environmental, technological, and socio-material ambiguities. The annual conference of »Matters of Activity«, organized by Bastian Beyer, José D. Cojal González, Léa Perraudin, and Christian Stein, attends to such complexities by intertwining active matters on multiple scales with questions of modelling, making and playing on unsteady grounds. By convening a variety of interdisciplinary positions, we seek to inspire collaborative means to negotiate the legacies and futures of material-driven research.
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Film still Overcast, Michaela Büsse, 2025
22.9.2025
Vacant Futures
Michaela Büsse exhibits in Prague
At the core of this exhibition »Architectures of Desire and Abandonment« in Prague’s VI PER GALLERY are two films by MoA Associated Member Michaela Büsse: »Overcast« (2025), set in the largely deserted Forest City in Johor, Malaysia, and »White Elephant« (2022), filmed at the stalled Melaka Gateway reclamation project. Both trace the contradictions of speculative urbanism. In their suspension, these sites become landscapes of haunting as well as persistence, where animals, plants, and people repurpose spaces never meant for them. The exhibition can be visited until 15 November 2025.
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1.10.2025–4.10.2025
Philosophie der Aktivität von Form und Materie
Internationales Symposium organisiert von Horst Bredekamp, Sabine Marienberg und Wolfgang Schäffner
Das Symposium geht der Frage nach, wie sich Geist und Materie, Form und Material als wechselseitig bestimmte Prozesse denken lassen. Daraus ergibt sich die Aufgabe einer Philosophie der aktiven Materie, die nicht nur eine Brücke zwischen Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften schlägt, sondern die integrative Einheit von Information und Material, Logik und Ästhetik konzeptuell erschließt.
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Key Visual On Water Ausstellung, Humboldt Lab 2025. Copyright: Berlin University Alliance
10.10.2025
On Water. WasserWissen in Berlin
Exhibition at Humboldt Lab shows works by Dimitra Almpani-Lekka and Rasa Weber
Water is life, but it can also destroy. The exhibition »On Water. WasserWissen in Berlin« will show current research projects of the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) on the topic of water from October 10, 2025, in the Humboldt Labor. These will be flanked by artistic positions that deal with the element of water and vividly convey its versatility. MoA researchers Dimitra Almpani-Lekka and Rasa Weber contribute to the exhibition with objects from their research on rainwater harvesting and artificial reefs.
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»Syntopolis« reef prototype in STARESO. Design: Rasa Weber, rasaweber.com. Co-Design and Production: Atelier Marie Drouet. Photo: Till Timmermann
10.10.2025
Die Spree fließt Queer
Artist Talk und Workshop zur Eröffnung der neuen Ausstellung im Humboldt Lab
Anlässlich der Eröffnung der neuen Ausstellung im Humboldt Lab spricht Daniel Tyradellis mit MoA Mitglied Rasa Weber und Jakob Kukula darüber, wie künstlerische und immersive Praktiken unsichtbare Unterwasserökologien sichtbar machen, politische Diskurse erweitern und strukturellen Wandel anstoßen können. Im anschließenden Workshop mit Rasa Weber erfahren Besucher:innen, wie ein künstliches Riff entsteht und wirken mithilfe traditioneller Handwerkstechniken an der Fertigstellung eines solchen mit.
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