Pretty Porous – Alles Porös

The science exhibition Pretty Porous – Alles Porös at the Planetarium Stuttgart offered insights into the world of porous media and showed how current research makes the invisible visible. It ran from 18 June to 30 August 2020.

The exhibition turns the planetarium foyer into a shared space and leads visitors through the everyday work of researchers, which usually stays hidden. Desks, monitors and a printer, the ordinary infrastructure of research, become the exhibition display. Seven workstations offer different ways into the topic: a quick introduction, short texts, videos and graphics on screen, and the original scientific papers and results.

In the darkened foyer, desk lamps and glowing screens give each workstation an intimate light. Suspended vertical louvres frame the workstations and divide the foyer into zones. The slats rotate, open and close, so the space keeps changing. As visitors move through it, new views and permeabilities open up, leading into a world that surrounds us but remains unseen.

The exhibition was a cooperation between SFB 1313 at the University of Stuttgart and the Reallabor Space Sharing at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design.

Project Info

Status
completed

Year
2020

Location
Stuttgart, DE

TYPE
commission

category
exhibition

client
Universität Stuttgart, SFB 1313

collaboration
Reallabor Space Sharing

Team
Sara Enab, Natascha Peinsipp, Felix Steinhoff

Links
allesporoes.de, World Wide Sharing

Axonometric of the Planetarium Stuttgart: domed auditorium at the centre, the workstations along the curved foyer in grey asphalt kollektiv

Plan of a workstation from above, annotated with its uses: introduction, in-depth papers, coffee break, discussion asphalt kollektiv

Plan of a workstation with chairs and figures overlaid in colour, tracing how it is used over time asphalt kollektiv

Pretty Porous in the planetarium foyer: workstations framed by white hanging louvres, an orange wall in the foreground asphalt kollektiv

Workstation with a desk lamp and two monitors, one showing „Geothermie“, seen through the white louvres asphalt kollektiv

Two workstations back to back in the dark, each lit by a desk lamp, cables hanging to the floor asphalt kollektiv

Two screens: a microscope image titled „Was sind poröse Medien?“ and an explainer video asphalt kollektiv

Folder of scientific papers and headphones on a desk in front of a monitor asphalt kollektiv

Shared table with folders and cups, behind it the louvres and a wall of blue and green panels asphalt kollektiv

Exhibition title projected onto the white louvres behind a workstation, a black text wall to the right asphalt kollektiv

White louvres beneath the foyer ceiling with exposed ventilation ducts and blue steel beams asphalt kollektiv

Pretty Porous – Alles Porös

The exhibition was a cooperation between SFB 1313 at the University of Stuttgart and the Reallabor Space Sharing at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design.