Material Acts: Experimentation in Architecture and Design is a Getty PST ART Art and Science Collide exhibition at Craft Contemporary. The exhibition examines the role of nature as a starting point for material experimentation in the domains of architecture, craft, and science. While nature has often stood in as a model, metaphor, or resource for designers, the recent global upheavals in climate, ecology, and technology are driving intensified understandings of nature’s tangible and imagined substrate. The exhibition examines how contemporary design practices mobilize, confound, and generate natures, whether through simulating mechanics or growing biological matter. The exhibition is organized around five “material acts,” Re-Fusing, Stitching, Animating, Disassembling, and Feeding. Each of these terms operate as thematic clusters illustrating key events in a material’s production, from the fusion of sedimentary grain such as sand with plastics, to the intentional dismantling of a stone column by the pulling of a single piece of string. The exhibition highlights new material practices alongside the rich milieu of ideas that accompany their making, including revisiting the term “nature,” “innovation,” and “sustainability.” Terms such as such as biodesign, biomimicry, and biorealism are revisited through the perspectives of life cycles, degrowth and post-naturalism, perspectives that together show nature to be inheritably and intentionally altered by humans.

Contributors: Adobeisnotsoftware, After Architecture, Anupama Kundoo, Assemble, Assia Crawford, Atelier LUMA, BC architects, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, DOSU Studio Architecture, Dylan Wood, Gramazio Kohler Research, HANNAH, Joar Nango, Maru Garcia, Natural Materials Lab, Omar Kahn, Post Rock, Rael San Fratello, Sara Inga Utsi Bongo, SOFTLAB, Soft Matters, Sutherlin Santo, Yogiaman Tracy Design

Generous support of Material Acts: Experimentation in Architecture and Design is provided by The Getty Foundation.

Additional Support is provided by The National Endowment for the Arts, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and The Antonia and Vladimir Kulaev Cultural Heritage Fund.

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