DESSAU-ROßLAU.- What makes a material smart? How do materials influence our lives? How do we work with them in order to shape our present and future? Questions pertaining to the significance and processing of materials were already being addressed at the historic Bauhaus. Now, almost 100 years later, the exhibition smart materials satellites. Material as Experiment in the Stahlhaus on the Dessau-Törten housing estate, built as a material experiment by the Bauhauslers in 1926/27, focuses on the latest research into materials.

The exhibition as an experimental research laboratory
Together with the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation presents a three-month interactive exhibition that aims to transfer knowledge between the disciplines of science, art and design and to communicate with the general public. The latest innovations of engineers have been combined with the material experiments of designers and investigated together with the exhibition’s visitors. Based on the idea that research is for everyone, the exhibition invites the visitor to learn about smart materials in an experimental research laboratory set-up. The exhibition and a diverse supporting programme will enable both specialists and the general public to immerse themselves in the latest research into materials and, in a collaborative process, develop possible applications for material experiments. The exhibition runs from 13 July to 22 October 2017.

Material as experiment in science, design and art
Material developments in the natural sciences, so-called smart materials, are, broadly speaking, still unknown to designers and the general public. Few applications have been tested. At the same time, material research and development is currently a focus of attention in the arts and in design. It is no longer just the everyday object, but rather the material itself, which is being designed.

The Bauhauslers, too, once made the experience of materials the starting point of every design. The exhibition in the Stahlhaus shows in a range of set-ups what is being done in research and experimentation on and with materials in the twenty-first century. In the process, it becomes evident that the understanding of materials, the goals, work processes and outcomes in the disciplines of science, design and art are extremely diverse.

The natural sciences, in their focus on so-called smart materials, utilise highly complex, machine-controlled production methods in order to create smart materials through targeted interventions. They ‘programme’ the materials with seemingly magical properties, which yields functional materials that have a capacity to independently respond to environmental conditions. The structure is complex, the areas of application barely tested. The Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin has been working on these material innovations for a number of years in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute IWU. The results of their research are included in the exhibition in the Stahlhaus in Dessau. Visitors will be able to learn in a playful way how these fascinating smart materials function.

In another thematic section of the exhibition, visitors encounter the current material research being carried out by designers, which appears to contrast with the highly complex working methods of engineers. Here, there is no reference to smart or ‘dumb’ materials; instead, the question being asked is how, in an increasingly complex world, we might once again draw closer the material itself. But designers and engineers are united by their preoccupation with the question of how to design the material itself. The designers become alchemists. What are things made of? How are they made? How can people once again become part of the production processes? The return to simple working processes, the rediscovery of earlier design techniques and the preoccupation with longforgotten materials thus come to the fore in design research.

With regard to art, the SYN Stiftung | Kunst Design Wissenschaft has put forward the SYN Award, which offers two three-month residencies at the Bauhaus in Dessau, facilitating the artistic discourse for the exhibition. The residency guests are Marit Wolters (Vienna) and Wagehe Raufi (Offenbach am Main). Marit Wolters studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She addresses the acoustic potential of architectonic materials such as aerated concrete and steel and, in doing so, utilises the Stahlhaus designed by Georg Muche and Richard Paulick as a sounding board. For the artist Wagehe Raufi, a student at the University of Art and Design in Offenbach am Main, circular flows in fluctuating materials serve as a conceptual point of departure for the coming together of all materials. Her work centres on the processes of the creation and dissolution of materialities.

The Steel House in Dessau-Törten as an exhibition venue
Georg Muche and Richard Paulick’s Steel House, built 1926/27, is connected as an exhibition venue with the material experiments and processes of the historic Bauhaus and contemporary material research. Muche and Paulick were concerned with rendering materials visible using an industrial design vocabulary and the transfer into everyday culture. The house of steel and the garden which belongs to it provide a fitting platform for the experiments and events of the exhibition smart materials satellites. Material as Experiment.