Matter Matters

The Museu del Disseny—DHub Barcelona presents Matter Matters. Designing with the World, an exhibition curated by architect and researcher Olga Subirós that rethinks the material foundations of design in a time of climate emergency and planetary crisis. Featuring over 600 objects from the Museum’s collections, spanning the 12th century to the present day, alongside nearly 100 contemporary works by invited participants, the exhibition exposes the extractivist origins and colonial past of material production while advocating for design as a tool for regeneration.

The exhibition unfolds across eight thematic areas—petrochemical, vegetal, animal, microbiological, mineral, digital, intangible, and affective matter—offering a political ecology of objects. Through more than sixty micro-narratives, objects are activated as discursive agents, problematizing dominant material paradigms and opening pathways toward decarbonization, decolonization, and a new material consciousness. The scenography resists conventional museographic logics, instead juxtaposing historical artifacts with contemporary design strategies to provoke cognitive friction and critical reflection.

Key installations include Calculating Empires by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler which is an investigative project revealing the deep entanglement of computation, geopolitics, and resource extraction in the global expansion of artificial intelligence;  Studio Lemercier’s Slow Violence, which documents resistance to extractivist devastation at Germany’s Hambach mine; Strata Incognita, an audiovisual work that poetically unveils the living complexity of soil ecosystems by Grandeza Studio + Locument; and Still Life, an arrangement of 200 ceramic pieces spanning the 13th to 21st centuries, challenging the Cartesian divide between nature and culture; Red Smoke by El Último Grito, recalling the fragility of our ecological equilibrium.

The exhibition has invited nearly 100 designers, architects, artists, and researchers including: 2Monos, 300.000 km/s, Frederic Amat, Archivo Prada Poole, Antoni Arola, Arrels Fundació, Banzai Turba, Basurama, Samira Benini Allaouat, Nerea Calvillo, Leandro Cano, Matilde Cassani, Izaskun Chinchilla, Curro Claret, Cooperativa La Col, Kate Crawford, Domestic Data Streamers, ecoLogicStudio, Eliurpi, El Último Grito, Julia Esqué, Estampa, Teresa Estapé, Flores & Prats Arquitectes, Laura Freixas, Ignacio Galán, Alex Gifreu, Sara González de Ubieta, Grandeza Studio, Martí Guixé, Herobeat Studios, Cristian Herrera Dalmau, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation, Vladan Joler, Youngmin Kang, Klarenbeek & Dros, Zsofia Kollar, Rem Koolhaas - Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Locument, Mary Maggic, Makeat, Materfad, Ana Mir, Txell Miras, Gerard Moliné, Joana Moll, Marc Morro, Iván L. Munuera, Lucas Muñoz, Cris Noguer, Nomada Studio, Carles Oliver, Anastasia Pistofidou, Miriam Ponsa, Josep Ponsatí, Philippe Rahm, RCR (R. Aranda, C. Pigem, R. Vilalta Arquitectes), Recetas Urbanas, Andrés Reisinger, Enric Ruiz-Geli/Cloud9, Guillermo Santomá, Inés Sistiaga, SILA Studio, Squeeze The Orange, Fanni Stafford, Daniel Steegman, Studio Lemercier, Studio Jaia, Suma arquitectura, TAKK (mireia luzárraga + alejandro muiño), The Glass Apprentrice, Top Manta, Tornen les Esquelles, Ramón Úbeda, Un Parell d’Arquitectes, Patricia Urquiola, Joan Vellvé, Sanne Visser.

The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive three-year public programme, including the annual Designing with the World Conference, a series of weekly events, keynote lectures and educational programmes. A major publication co-published by the Barcelona City Council and Actar Publishers, edited by Olga Subirós and designed by Alex Gifreu, brings together contributions from more than 50 leading thinkers and practitioners—including philosophy, design, architecture, sociology, geology, anthropology, and chemistry. Through intersecting lines of thought, the book explores a central question: how do we redefine our relationship with materials in an era of profound transformation?

The exhibition’s publication includes contributions from: 300.000 km/s, Andreu Balius, Karen Barad, Ethel Baraona and Anna Puigjaner, Laura Benítez Valero, Jane Bennett, Francesca Bria and Malcolm Bain, Benjamin Bratton, Blanca Callén, Nerea Calvillo, Isabel Campi, Josep Capsir, Rossend Casanova, Maria Antònia Casanovas, María Íñigo Clavo, Antonio Cobo, Pilar Cortada, Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler, Jose Luis de Vicente, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, Elvira Dyangani Ose and Raúl Muñoz de la Vega, Estampa, Pol Esteve, Isabel Fernández del Moral, Uriel Fogué, Blanca Garcia Gardelegui, Eva Franch i Gilabert, Raul Goñi, Clara Guasch, David Howe, Daniel Ibáñez, Tim Ingold, Institute for Postnatural Studies, Andrés Jaque / Office of Political Innovation, Zsofia Kollar, Joan Miquel Llodrà Nogueras, Marta Malé-Alemany and Tony Schoen, Valérie Bergeron, Timothy Morton, William Myers, Cris Noguer, Carles Oliver, Marina Otero, Javier Peña, Mónica Piera, Blanca Pujals, Philippe Rahm, Bika Rebek and Marlies Wirth, Iván Rodríguez, Olga Subirós, Robert Thompson, Laura Tripaldi, Ramón Úbeda, Alicia Valero.

Matter Matters. Designing with the World challenges the hegemonic narratives of matter, problematizing their conceptual frameworks and allowing us to envision a transition from extractivism to compost: from exploitation to cycle, from plunder to regeneration, from dominion to shared responsibility.