In this conversation, the curator of Matter Matters: Designing with the World and co-curators of Material Acts: Experimentation in Architecture and Design highlight the significance of invisible labour and alternative production spaces. Proposing a relational approach to materials as a feminist act, the discussion underscores the importance of language, storytelling and interconnected practices in design.

FEDERICA ZAMBELETTI / KOOZMyriad exhibitions, publications and research on diverse and regenerative material ecologies have become central to architectural and design discourse for some time. I'm interested in understanding how your reciprocal projects fit within this lineage — how they build upon or challenge these ideas.

OLGA SUBIRÓSMatter Matters situates itself within the lineage of material ecology by focusing not just on individual materials but on new relationships with matter. It builds upon prior regenerative design discourses by weaving a political ecology of materials — presenting matter not as an inert substance, but as agent, witness, and collaborator. It challenges traditional narratives by juxtaposing historical and contemporary objects to question extractivism at its roots while also reshaping the visitor’s understanding of materiality — shifting it from resource to interlocutor.

We position design not merely as a response to material challenges but as a practice embedded in the systemic conditions that produced them. This is achieved through the activation of both historical pieces and contemporary works. The exhibition frames design within a continuum of complicity and potential for change, challenging the notion that innovation is solely future-oriented.

One of the key aspects for me is this new relationship with matter. For a general audience, it can sometimes be difficult to engage with concepts like post-nature, post-humanities, or new materialism, but the exhibition establishes a kind of kinship with material. This connection allows visitors to approach the project in an accessible way, helping larger audiences participate in this cultural transformation. Ultimately, the exhibition is about renaming and re-signifying materials, histories, and transformations, emphasising intra-connectedness and relationality over traditional object-focused approaches.

KATE YEH CHIUThere are many alignments and resonances between our two projects. One unique aspect of Material Acts was its context within a craft museum, which shaped the accessibility we needed to build around the project — especially for a general audience, or one with a particular interest in craft.

We began our research by exploring the relationship between craft and knowledge production. Another broader contextual framework we were working within was the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time Initiative — an event similar to a triennale in Southern California, where over 40 cultural institutions stage projects around a shared theme. For our edition, the theme was Art and Science, which led us to think about craft, design, and science as interconnected modes of engaging with material to produce knowledge — each fostering a direct and intimate relationship with matter.

Rather than focusing solely on new approaches to material engagement, we also included traditional and indigenous methods. What interested us was examining how matter is engaged across its life cycle — through sites of production, different types of actors involved at various stages, from extraction to application in construction, dismantling, and beyond. This perspective opens up new ways of understanding matter and material— not just as resources and outputs, but as complex, interwoven systems. It also allows for a deeper interrogation of how materiality itself is complicated and constantly redefined.

JIA YI GUI completely agree. The framework of approaching materials through process-based thinking was something we deliberately set up in the exhibition. It was meant to challenge the idea that designers primarily engage in product-based work, shifting instead toward methods borrowed from media studies or histories of science — where procedures and operations are just as significant as the final material itself. As designers conduct these experiments, we wanted to examine the sequences involved — how do we differentiate between feeding a material and animating a material? We don’t always articulate this explicitly, but I do think that, in both projects, the relational approach to materials is inherently feminist. It’s about recognising that procedures, habits, and conventions aren’t linear or smooth.

This feminist perspective was largely inspired by an organisation in Los Angeles — the Feminist Center for Creative Work, where I serve on the board. Their guiding principle is: The process is the product. They emphasise that a feminist approach is deeply rooted in practice rather than fixed end results. Shifting away from viewing built work as the culmination of architectural knowledge allows us to focus on the operations, conventions, and ways of knowing that enable material exploration. This closely parallels feminist scholarship, which has long sought to uncover invisible forms of labour.

If you think about it, a new material doesn’t simply emerge from a thought experiment — it moves through experimentation, testing, and moments of failure. Whether working in a laboratory, a yard, or in collaboration with knowledge workers in agriculture or biotech, these engagements happen in highly situated spaces and networks. We were keen to test new ways of understanding materials by reframing them as verbs. We’ve been calling this approach beyond the authored material, beyond the authored object — where material itself can be an event. How does material instantiate the many events that precede its presence in your hands? These are the kinds of questions we are still working through.

JYGCould you share more about how you navigated the curation of 80,000 objects?

OSMy initial approach was actually quite similar to yours. I originally wanted to curate an exhibition called Matter Matters, and I asked Karen Barad if I could use that phrase as a kind of guiding motto. Barad was incredibly generous and encouraging. We’d been in conversation for some time, and I had the chance to meet Barad in person two weeks ago, which was truly special. Initially, I was focused on working exclusively with contemporary designers, particularly those engaged in highly situated practices. For example, Cris Noguer works with wood in a way she calls dissident matter — using timber that the industrial furniture sector rejects due to stains, cracks, unusual colours, or humidity changes over time. Rather than discarding this material, she embraces its evolving nature, crafting furniture that interacts with its environment. People who own her pieces often find that they become integral parts of their homes, adapting and transforming over time, creating kinship. She resists the idea that varnishing should define material value — once something is coated, it loses its essence.

There are so many incredible women in Barcelona experimenting with materials in radical ways. Sara Gonzalez de Ubieta, for instance, works with algae-derived bacterial cellulose and even mycelium to create shoes. These kinds of material explorations were central to my initial curatorial concept. At first, the exhibition was meant to be temporary. But then, the newly appointed museum director, José Luis de Vicente, approached me and said, No, this is a brilliant approach to materiality — go for it! Make it the official presentation of the collection. Suddenly, what could have been his role was passed to me, and I accepted with the condition that it wouldn’t follow a chronological structure nor a disciplinary one. I invited 80 designers, and through this exhibition, 40 of their works have been acquired for the collection. In total, we ended up with an exhibition of around 700 so-called objects, though I don't really view them as individual artifacts. Instead, I arranged them in juxtapositions and ecological relationships — none of them are presented in isolation. Their materiality and discursive material narratives are completely entangled.

This curatorial approach has been provocative within the city. There's an ongoing debate in the public sphere — heritage institutions, particularly La Reial Acadèmia Catalana de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi, which takes care to practice, enhance and disseminate research into the arts in Catalonia, see my approach as taboo, arguing that it breaks conventions. Meanwhile, design schools, architectural communities, and the public audience recognise it as a pressing need that has been successfully addressed. Thousands of people have visited, perhaps drawn in by the controversy itself. Regardless, the exhibition has only been open since February 21, 2025 , and it will remain for three years as the official presentation of the collection.

JYGI asked about the collection because for us it was challenging. We didn’t feel like we had a clear inventory of objects — we had practices. We had a list of 100 practitioners, but the objects included in the exhibition remained unstable.How do you curate and present research? That was one of the curatorial challenges we faced, particularly given our specific audience within the Getty PST Art and Science programming. It included both an art audience and a craft audience, and I think craft in the U.S. carries slightly different connotations. While broadly similar, her craft tends to be tied more closely to ideas of individual expression — a kind of recuperation of the self against capitalism. Unlike in Europe, where there are efforts to integrate craft into manufacturing at scale, in the U.S. it hasn’t quite found that relationship to industry.

Our craft audience was comfortable with ceramic vessels, containers, woven textiles — materials that align with traditional expectations of craft — but they weren’t necessarily seeking exhibitions centered on research. Meanwhile, the art audience posed its own challenges, given its reliance on a witness model of exhibitions — a preference for hyper-visual presentation.

One ongoing issue was the object list. You had to finalise it, but the objects were in constant flux, changing with the designers. Many designers didn’t even have a fixed inventory of work to exhibit. Some of them didn’t consider the experiments in their studios to be art or displayable objects, so we had to convince them: Yes, we want this thing — the thing you don’t even want to look at — as evidence of your process. That negotiation was incredibly interesting for me. The question remains — how do you exhibit material processes? It’s still a challenging but deeply engaging curatorial proposition.

KYCWith our strong focus on process — often over finished products — we were particularly interested in tests, failures, and experimental records. We looked for logbooks, inscriptions, and other documentation that might offer a glimpse into those activities. But more often than not, designers would tell us, Oh, we didn’t keep that. We only have the final project. That was a recurring challenge.
Another difficulty in foregrounding the activity and event of materials was the presence of unruly objects — pieces that required ongoing maintenance and care, something entirely new for museum staff. I think of a piece contributed by Joar Nango and Sara Inga Utsi Bongo, a translucent work made from halibut stomachs. These stomachs were flayed, dried flat, and stitched together using reindeer sinew. Since the material was organic and pliable, it needed moisturising and flipping every one to two weeks in the gallery.

We also had bacterial cellulose growing in the gallery — it had to be harvested and fed sugar between cycles, which raised concerns about fruit flies. There was algae growing on 3D-printed ceramic forms, and since it was the first time the work had been shown in Los Angeles, the dry climate was an issue — the algae kept dying. So beyond upkeep, we were dealing with feeding and caring for materials in ways that changed the labour expectations for museum staff.

I’m really curious about your experience with this, Olga. Given that some works were acquired into a collection, I wonder how the institution you’ve been working with has had to evolve. How has it responded to the challenges posed by these material needs?

Another fascinating challenge involved Geobacters. One of the most beautiful pieces in the exhibition is a lamp by Samira Benini Allaouat, Geollum, that generates electricity using geobacters, which live in soil and water. This introduced a completely new process — one requiring careful management to ensure it didn’t interfere with nearby medieval furniture. The museum staff had to engage in conversations around how to control these living systems in ways that ensured conservation while allowing for innovative material exploration.

Ultimately, this exhibition has forced the institution to rethink what belongs in a museum of design. They’re having to become more flexible and open to these new materials and their behaviors. It’s an ongoing process, but one that I find necessary and exciting.

KOOZSince your exhibition challenges institutional space and shifts from product-oriented thinking to process-based approaches, how did that influence even the simplest curatorial decisions — such as captions? When presenting a process rather than a finalised object, how do you convey its meaning to an audience? Can you still reference a designer or specific location in the conventional sense? Especially when, as Olga and Kate noted, the material itself is dynamic — breathing within the space and interacting with other agents — how do you rethink the standard format of exhibition descriptions?

KYCAt first, our decisions around language and labels seemed like broad, straightforward framework choices, but in hindsight, their consequences were far more layered and revealing. One significant decision was associating every exhibition piece with a gerund — the active form of a verb. We had over 20 designers, and rather than displaying their works in a singular, undifferentiated space, we grouped them under action umbrellas: animating, feeding, stitching, assembling, and refusing. This allowed us to flatten preconceived hierarchies and biases.

For instance, under stitching, we presented hand-stitched work alongside machine-knitted pieces and even 3D-printed weaving, treating them as interconnected practices rather than distinct categories. Under animating, we included laminated wood and metals with capacity to deform under changing environmental conditions, alongside polymers actuated by small motors. This framework enabled us to explore how materials respond to shifts — such as changes in heat or humidity — while also prompting questions about animacy, whether naturally occurring or machine-actuated.

Another approach — something I hadn’t fully appreciated until this conversation — was the formatting of the labels themselves, where we foregrounded processes over objects. Each label was curated by our team, and prioritised a deliberate pairing of matter and action. For example, an object on display would be presented primarily as "laminated bimetal" or "machine-knit dreadlock,"  and secondarily as an artwork. By reframing objects through verbs, we challenged the typical museum setting, which often privileges completed works over dynamic material transformations. It was a unique way to redirect focus toward movement, agency, and embedded systems of change.

OSIn my case, it’s less about process and more about recognising that what the audience is seeing is an emergent moment of materiality — something that originates somewhere is moving somewhere else, and is happening now, in relation to other objects.

My strategy was not just to rely on texts on the walls but to situate each group of objects within a small narrative. There are 65 narratives, each functioning like another thing within the grouping of things, marking a deliberate transition from "thinking" about static objects to "thinging," as Tim Ingold proposes, emphasising active relationships and ongoing transformations. At the same time, certain institutional requirements had to be met — museum staff needed to display author names, titles, years, donors, or collection inventory numbers. That part was non-negotiable. What I did negotiate was how materiality itself was framed. Every caption includes an arrow to the materiality just displayed after the name of the object. I wanted visitors to shift their attention away from conventional categories and instead engage directly with the physical presence of things.

That being said, all 65 narratives in the exhibition were written and titled by me — not just to frame the objects, but to capture the tension of what is happening within and between them. Some titles of the discursive material narratives were straightforward  as: “Warming Homes and Bodies” — which brings together a child’s bed conceived as a wool-lined shelter and the radical low-budget renovation 10k House by the Barcelona-based architectural office Takk . Their project reimagines domestic space in response to the energy crisis, combining spatial experimentation with climate awareness. It proposes thermal zoning strategies to optimize energy use and prioritizes local materials like Catalan wood and natural lambswool, applied through dry, low-tech construction systems that allow for partial self-construction by non-specialized workers. Others like “After the Party”, addressed microplastics but also referenced biodegradable sequins from plant-based cellulose by Fanni Stafford— sequins that speculate of going  party without contributing to pollution.

One of the most important aspects of the exhibition was ensuring that these narratives shaped the way objects were understood. Of course, some of the overarching categorisations were predictable: “Petrochemical Matter”, “Animal Matter”, “Mineral Matter” and so on but then expanded the categories to include the “Digital Matter” section— not as a tangible substance, but as something shaped by design, raising questions about its ecological impact and, for example, the role of data-driven urban planning by 300.000 Km/s.

Similarly, the  “Intangible Matter” section was essential. It encompassed light, sound, and smell, but I also extended it to include body shape through drugs, referencing open-source estrogen transition strategies — such as those explored by Mary Maggic. Some of this is linked to speculative design approaches and concepts like techno-body, as discussed by Paul B. Preciado. In this sense, the exhibition tackled historical and contemporary perspectives — such as Enviropill by Archigram , where a drug can shift an entire environmental experience, positioning pharmacology as a form of architecture.

Visitors often reacted with confusion, particularly to the final two categories of matter: Affection and Fiction. For me, these are matter — essential elements of the exhibition. Some people outright rejected the idea, while others embraced it. But reclaiming affection — a radical affection — felt crucial. The disaffection we collectively experience has led us to structural inequalities and the climate emergency. Re-engaging with affection means embracing the right to repair, understanding how design fosters communities, and recognising how collective narratives shape emotional heritage.

For instance, in Barcelona, there’s a Senegalese design community, Top Manta, creating T-shirts, footwear, and objects that have created not only a brand but a safe place for the Senegalese people arriving for the first time in the city. This echoes the work of Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores, as seen in the 2023 Architecture Biennale in Venice. Their practice refuses demolition and instead works with what they call emotional heritage: working with existing materials — preserving doors, windows, and elements that redefine spaces while respecting their layers of history. It’s not traditional conservation — it’s a radical reuse approach that transforms the thinking and making of architectural practice.

And fiction itself? Fiction is needed. It’s a form of matter — something we require to rethink, to dream, to imagine alternate futures. I included works from El Último Grito, a Spanish couple based in London to emphasise this. Ultimately, the exhibition was about renaming and re-signifying — constantly challenging assumptions about material, history, and transformation. Rather than providing fixed descriptions, the exhibition constantly opens questions. It encourages inquiry: What is it? What does it mean? For example, a striking blue vessel from the medieval period juxtaposed with a blue contemporary design object — and then a mobile phone. What does this grouping signify? It’s about cobalt. The only mobile phone today with a fair trade cobalt certificate is the Fairphone, ensuring that its cobalt has traceability and has been extracted under ethical conditions. The grouping prompts visitors to reconsider the relationships between historical craftsmanship, industrial production, and ethical material sourcing.

This curatorial approach has sparked debate in the public sphere. Just today, a major newspaper in Barcelona published a column questioning my decisions — criticising the juxtaposition of medieval artifacts with contemporary objects and mobile phones. Yet I see this unexpected controversy as valuable. People are talking. The conversation has extended beyond the museum into public discourse — whether this is the right direction for exhibitions, or whether Barcelona should have a more Victoria and Albert Museum permanent collection style.

KOOZIf key institutions are missing, how do you carve out spaces for meaningful discourse? Are there environments that naturally lend themselves to these conversations?
In  Milan — despite institutions for architecture and design — some of the voices being hosted don’t seem entirely relevant. We’ve had to carve out spaces beyond traditional institutions, finding ways to nurture discourse in restaurants, bars, shops — exploring how conversation and intellectual exchange can thrive in informal settings. Is something similar happening in Los Angeles? Where do you see spaces for activating and awakening discourse, both within the discipline and outside of its boundaries?

JYGA lot of the work happens through ephemeral, small-scale organising — often below the radar of professional attention and disconnected from dominant industry sectors. Unlike Germany, the UK, Spain or Italy — where I have many colleagues — the United States operates under an intensely corporatised architectural system. I really can't overstate that. It ties into the funding structures for architectural education, the levels of student debt, career trajectories, and the profession’s rigid liability chains. All of these factors shape where architects can go and what they can do after their studies.

OSThe Design Museum welcomes external voices, allowing individuals like myself to independently advance proposals. Most people working in this space are either professors at universities or, like me, maintain a separate practice that sustains their work. My architectural studio allows me to dedicate time to curatorial projects. I’m also deeply connected to the arts — I serve as a pro bono board member for Hangar, the Foundation of Visual Artists in Catalonia, which is a nonprofit initiative. It’s an incredibly precarious ecosystem, but one that is urgently needed. The schools have responded enthusiastically to the exhibition, and now many consider it essential to visit, which I’m very happy about.

There’s a wonderful design and architecture library in the museum — yet very few people use it. So I proposed starting a reading club open to students of architecture and design. We could begin with Matter Matters. Designing with the world— the exhibition’s publication, which features 50 contributors, all of them remarkable. Each has written just three or four pages, and most of the time, those pages are backed by a full book or a PhD research, meaning they serve as entry points — like doors to knowledge production.

Once an exhibition opens, you step outside the institution, but with the library, I see an opportunity to keep engaging. The librarian I’ve been working with seems optimistic — we may have a small budget next year to fund someone to coordinate the group. I truly believe this is necessary. We’ve had enough of Instagram-driven discourse; young people need to read, especially contemporary thinking — it helps them make sense of the world.

That’s why I placed so much emphasis on the exhibition book. The first chapter — Chapter Zero — focuses entirely on intra-connected matter. It includes contributions from thinkers like Karen Barad, Jane Bennett, Tim Ingold, Timothy Morton, and even the Institute for Postnatural Studies in Madrid, whom I deeply admire for how they  frame these discussions through seminars and research.

There’s so much work left to do. But we have a mission — a collective responsibility. We must keep going.

KYCCultural work in architecture is consistently undervalued and under- supported. There are no clear pathways for someone to become a curator or a writer in architecture, and when one does this, it is seen as a deviation from conventional practice. When we look at the three of us here, and also you, Federica, we see that much of our cultural work is either pro bono or severely undercompensated — something we do in addition to our design practice or teaching. Very few people manage to secure positions within the rare institutions that offer these roles.

Because of this, mentorship is scarce, and there’s little clarity on how to navigate this space professionally. In Los Angeles, there is always strong interest — ephemeral waves of designers, often just out of school and entering practice, with a desire to engage in cultural production and public discourse. We have, as many places, a local history of small short-lived cultural experiments — architecture galleries, publications, programs — that people invest their free time in but eventually stop to focus on making a living and tending to other responsibilities. This creates constant turnover, preventing continuity or a stable, sustainable community around cultural production.

That being said, there are a few remarkable institutions that exist globally and are sustained — ones that carve out space for this work in truly special ways.

OSIn Spain, in addition to Actar the publisher of Matter Matters book, there are several independent publishing labels focused on architecture and design. Puente Editores produces small books — its latest publication is by Pol Esteve , who is part of the Care Chair team at ETH alongside Anna Puijaner and Ethel Baraona (all of three are contributors at Matter Matters publication) . Another is dpr-barcelona, and a newer one, Caniche Editorial, also explores architecture and art. There’s also Tenov, a small but notable publisher.
I know the owners of these publishers personally, and like many in the field, they balance publishing with other practices. Yet, when someone publishes even a small work through these platforms, it feels like a major celebration — an opportunity to share ideas and reinforce a sense of community. There's a collective effort to think otherwise, to continuously challenge dominant narratives and engage with new perspectives.

JYGI wouldn’t say that interpreting materials as events is explicitly feminist, but it does involve a similar way of thinking. What is being made invisible? What are we failing to notice? How can we reorient our position in relation to the object of study so that we ask different questions? These questions also connect to philosophies of science, particularly the concept of the knower and the known — where we assume ourselves to be the knowers, and materials as the known. If we shift that assumption and interrogate what else we don’t know, it can fundamentally change how we engage with materials.
One example of this thinking emerged in our exhibition design. Kate and I wanted to show how material experimentation operates across multiple sites of production — not just in laboratories or high-tech environments. Some of it takes place in backyards, on ancestral land, in kitchens, in garages. Recognising alterity in spaces of experimentation was critical.

This isn’t to say all these spaces are necessarily women-run or gendered, though gender dynamics can shape them in compelling ways. Rather, it’s about adopting a perspective that acknowledges invisible labour — excavating the forms of work that dominant narratives often overlook.

KYCThis question brings to mind a text that has deeply shaped my thinking: A Feminist Manifesto for Patchwork Ethnography. Written by ethnographers Gökçe Günel, Saiba Varma, and Chika Watanabe, the manifesto responded to the sudden shift among academics during COVID when traditional fieldwork became inaccessible or unsafe.

Their argument was simple yet profound: they've always practiced in and away from the field. Work occurs in transit, in fragmented spaces — research is carried  wherever one goes, even as a subject shifts between roles, identities, and sites of production. The manifesto illuminated the intellectual labour embedded in invisible, everyday work — whether in the home, in caregiving roles, or in unexpected spaces not traditionally recognised as research environments.

One of its most compelling contributions was the call to reframe how we understand research itself and its embrace of fragmentation — an eagerness to engage with gaps, erasures, pauses — to reconsider time and collaboration beyond linear structures. Reflecting on this now is meaningful, because we’ve also acknowledged how many of us juggle multiple roles, and how our cultural production often happens in under-resourced conditions.

Yet, this is precisely the work. Its fragmented nature enriches it, shaping how we generate and synthesise ideas. In many ways, this mirrors how we construct meaning in the broader discourse of materials, processes, and relationality. The act of being split apart — across responsibilities, disciplines, and networks — becomes its own form of knowledge-making.

About

Material Acts: Experimentation in Architecture and Design is a Getty PST ART Art and Science Collide exhibition at Craft Contemporary which unfolded from the 24th of September 2024 until January 5th 2025. The exhibition was accompanied by a homonymous publication.

Matter Matters. Designing with the world is an exhibition at Museu del Disseny-DHub Barcelona open till December 2027 and it is also a publication available in three different editions English, Catalan, Spanish.

As part of our ambition of rendering inspirational content open access, please note that excerpts from the two publications will be published on the KoozArch platform in the coming months.

Bios

Kate Yeh Chiu is co-curator and editor of Materials Acts. As a designer, editor, and arts organizer, Kate's work investigates material flows and labor conditions at the peripheries of architectural and cultural production. She is Executive Director of Materials & Applications, an editor-at-large with the Avery Review, faculty at the University of Southern California School of Architecture.

Jia Yi Gu is co-curator and editor of Material Acts. She is an architectural scholar, curator, and designer with research interest in the history and politics of knowledge production, through the lens of media histories, cultural techniques, and material cultures. She is Assistant Professor in Architecture at Harvey Mudd College and co-director of the architecture research and design studio Spinagu. She develops exhibitions, texts, public programs and experimental projects.

Olga Subirós is an architect, curator and doctoral researcher at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). She is a teacher on the Master’s Degree in Design and Data at Elisava and the Master’s Degree in Integrated Architectural Design at La Salle, and is also the director of Olga Subirós Studio. Her approach, developed under the concept Displaying Emergency, explores the interconnected impact of datafication, ecological emergencies and social change through exhibitions, installations and public programmes that foster critical thinking and cultural innovation.

Federica Zambeletti is the founder and creative director of KoozArch. She is an architect, researcher and storyteller whose interests lie at the intersection of art, architecture and regenerative practices. Prior to dedicating her full attention to KoozArch in 2024, Federica collaborated with the architecture studio and non-profit agency for change UNA/UNLESS working on numerous cultural projects and the research of "Antarctic Resolution".