EXHIBITION
Atlas of Making
-- Fieldwork from Longmen

IfA Forum, Technische Universität Berlin

Visiting Hours:
24.11 – 12.12 | Mo. – Sa. 10:00–18:00

Location:
IfA Forum, TU Berlin
Ground floor, Straße des 17. Juni 152, 10623 Berlin

Midissage:
05.12 | 18:00
Talk & Reflection, with Chinese Tea and Snacks

Exhibition curated by: Li Lin

The Exhibition Atlas of Making unfolds through multiple perspectives — collected raw materials, traditional tools, drawings, texts, photographs and films — forming a conglomerate of fieldworks from Longmen Town in southeastern China. The fieldwork was initially conducted during an on-site winter school in March 2025 and later revisited, processed, and reflected upon during the following summer semester.
In an era defined by industrial production and digital abstraction, architectural education has become increasingly detached from the material realities of how things are made. The dominance of the studio model—with its emphasis on representation and individual authorship—has obscured the reciprocal relationship between making, knowing, and caring. Atlas of Making proposes an alternative: a pedagogical framework grounded in situated making, material intelligence, and the ethics of care. Developed through a 14-day winter school in Longmen Town, the project engages with a world where the (un)built environment is constantly negotiated, adapted, transformed, and maintained. The act of making becomes a daily yet transformative form of learning — one that reconnects the maker with the social, cultural and material fabric of the world. As Tim Ingold observes, “To make is to correspond with materials, not impose form upon them.” Making, in this sense, is an invitation to multiple dialogues with our environment. In Longmen, the town itself became both teacher and terrain of inquiry. Through anthropological fieldwork and collaborative on-site making, we explored how materials, objects, and (non)human form networks of care that point toward non-extractive, collective forms of habitation and production.


The exhibition includes contributions from the following:

Craftsmen: Huang Yongguo, Shu Xinren, Sun Xijun
Participants of the On-site Winter School (in alphabetical order):
Alec Rovensky, Anupama Kundoo, Antonia Walz, Arturo Lopez Mejia, Chen Cheng, Chen Qianzi, Chen Xuanru, Elias Matteo Trabucchi, Fan Hongsheng, Gan Jinrong, Gan Yuhe, Jiang Min, Lanhua Weng, Li Lin, Li Yiwei, Liang Song, Linus Krug, Liu Yizhiqi, Luis Hagemann, Marius Busch, Marius Maurizio Mühleisen, Mascha Fehse, Maximilian Stefan Zalewski, Olga Luise Warning, Selma Juana Schulte-Frohlinde, Sophie-Marie Katzenbächer, Wang Jiangnan, Wang Luoru, Wang Shuyang, Xu Guanfu, Xu Hangyu, Yang Siyu
Post-Production in SS 2025 (in alphabetical order):
Alec Rovensky, Antonia Walz, Arturo Lopez Mejia, Lanhua Weng, Li Lin, Linus Krug, Selma Juana, Schulte-Frohlinde, Sophie-Marie Katzenbächer
Supported by: Fachgebiet Architektur und Entwurfsmethoden / Making Matters, School of Architecture at China Academy of Art, Vektorworks