DUSTS INSTITUTE

RESEARCH ENTERPRISE             dustsinstitute@gmail.com





SHOW: All  INSTALLATIONS  APPEARANCES  WORKSHOPS  PURCHASE  RESEARCH
Venice Biennale
2025 What should outer architectural surfaces look like, and why? Epidermitecture challenges conventional notions of cleanliness and maintenance by exploring naturally occurring stains—thin layers of microorganisms (biopatinas) that filter air pollutants, reduce heat islands, and support biodiversity. Exhibited as part of the curatorial selection at Arsenale. 

group exhibition
website link

European Cultural Capital Trenčín 2026
2025-2026 This research project explores the evolving roles of urban and architectural surfaces in response to climate change, new technologies, and material processes. By examining weathering, patina, cleaning protocols, and renovation practices, the project reinterprets façade transformations as dynamic interactions between materiality, aesthetics, and environmental forces, challenging conventional notions of maintenance and urban identity.

exhibition/workshps/research
website link

India Design Week
2025 The Dust-Free Chamber exhibited at India Design Week, hosted in city with some of the world's worst air quality - New Delhi, offering a rare experience of breathing purified air. As part of the event, Dusts Institute will present its vision for sustainable urban environments, emphasizing the interplay between activism, architecture, and ecological responsibility.

talk/installation
website link

Terre et Temps
2024 As part of a European art/culture festival in France, the performance revealed and enacted the lifecycle of a dust particle, from its formation to its dispersal and transformation. Through movement, sound, and material interventions, the piece made visible dust’s unseen choreography—how it drifted, accumulated, eroded, and reconfigured space

performance
website link

Klima Biennale
2024 "All Surfaces Clean at All Times" was the title of the exhibition we attended as part of the Klima Biennale in Vienna, highlighting the urgent need to rethink aesthetic norms in architectural surfaces, particularly in the context of climate change.

group exhibition
website link

Bordering Plants
2024 For the Bordering Plants exhibition at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, our contribution extended beyond co-curating the show to creating a site-specific installation—a Growing Garden that responded to its environment.

group exhibition
website link

Dusts -free- Chamber
2021  An immersive installation with a controlled environment, offering a personal experience to breathe completely dust-free air.   By eliminating dust at a microscopic level, the installation provides a unique sensory experience of purified air, making the usually imperceptible systems of air control and environmental regulation physically tangible.

pop-up
video link

Weisser Fleck
2024  A living artwork, a scientific experiment, and a conceptual challenge to urban maintenance practices, this project 'draws' a 10-meter diameter circle on the façade of a housing block in Vienna by the thin layer of microorganisms that have accumulated on its surface.

semi-permanent
video link

Airsight Deck
2022  An interactive installation in public space that makes invisible environmental changes visible. How does the air around us change with the seasons—its color shifting in winter, summer heat, inversion, or smog? The installation presents twelve atmospheric scenarios, each revealing different levels of air pollution throughout the year.
site-specific
video link

Dusts Catching  
This workshop explores techniques for capturing and analyzing airborne dust, revealing its material presence and environmental significance. Through hands-on experiments and our Dusts Catcher Kit participants engage with filtration methods, surface sampling, and microscopic observation, transforming dust from an overlooked residue into a tool for understanding urban atmospheres.  

up to 25 participants
all age groups

Biopatina Workshop
 This workshop examines the natural aging and transformation of architectural surfaces through organic interactions with the environment. Participants explore weathering patterns, microbial growth, and material alterations, reinterpreting stains, discolorations, and patinas not as decay, but as dynamic markers of time and ecological processes.

up to 25 participants
all age groups

Dusts Catcher Kit
2020Tool for rendering the human impact upon the environment. The kit works as foldable and fully recyclable instrument that is designed to visually inform communities what kind of dusts is dominant in the air we breathe.Public engagement tool
220x150mm with a nanofilter
CLICK HERE TO ORDER
Biopatina Kit
2023Instrument fostering a deeper understanding of microorganisms in the environment. The main element is the temporary tattoo, which has been designed to be colourful, playful and stimulating to help the users to recognise what kind of microorganisms, if any, are on architectural and urban surfaces.  

Public  engagement tool
150x95mm with a tattoo
CLICK HERE TO ORDER
From Dust to Dusts
2025 The publication examines the material, philosophical, and architectural dimensions of dust as a force that unsettles established structures, both physically and conceptually. Drawing from interdisciplinary perspectives, it explores dust’s role in histories of pollution, climate, and urban space, revealing its capacity to challenge notions of permanence, purity, and order in human environments.

printed publication
180x120mm 200 pages
CLICK HERE TO ORDER
Epidermitecture
ongoing since 2021

collaboration: Institute for Art and Architecture, Institute of Natural Science and Technology in Arts, The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

partners: KÖR, BMWKMS, Slovak Arts Council, Creative Europe

press release: link We rarely notice the subtle stains or discolorations that form on buildings, nor do we often recognize how facades quietly transform over time. Yet, when observed closely, these material traces reveal a thin, living layer of biopatina created through the ongoing interaction between architectural outer surfaces and their environment.

This interdisciplinary research project investigates biopatina as both an ecological process and a material phenomenon. It introduces the concept of epidermitecture, which reimagines building surfaces not as static barriers but as dynamic, living interfaces that respond to their surroundings. Rather than treating these biological layers as unwanted blemishes, the project views them as valuable signs of environmental processes and the deep entanglement between architecture and the natural world.

Challenging traditional ideas of purity, control, and separation between built and natural environments, the research focuses on material transformations already occurring in urban settings; phenomena often overlooked or erased by routine maintenance. Through site-specific case studies at Vila Tugendhat in Brno, the Vltavská station in Prague, the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and the Viennese social housing estates, the project explores new methods of working with natural processes rather than against them, combining material-centered research with participatory practices that invite communities to engage with architectural surfaces as living, evolving entities. By studying, supporting, and collectively observing the growth of biopatina, the project aims to promote regenerative approaches to architecture and to foster richer forms of coexistence between human and non-human life.

Emerging from this work is the concept of a Biomaintenance Manifesto: a call to rethink maintenance itself as a practice of care, stewardship, and attentive coexistence. Biomaintenance rejects the idea that building surfaces must be kept static, pure, or untouched; instead, it embraces the natural transformations of materials as evidence of life, time, and ecological entanglement. It calls for a shift from erasure to observation, from cleansing to nurturing, recognizing that acts of maintenance are not neutral but carry deep ecological and ethical consequences. 

research on urban and architectural surfaces
Austria, Slovakia, Czech Rebuplic


links:  

Case Study Vila Tugendhat
Case Study Viennese social housing estate
Case Study Vltavská



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