How can materials currently defined as waste become the foundation of a new building culture?

In September, ROM for kunst og arkitektur hosts a collaboration with the Material Ecologies master studio from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO), where students and faculty move into ROM Studio to develop and present ongoing research and prototypes.

Surplus is conceived as both an exhibition and a working laboratory. It investigates material cultures and flows in contemporary construction, making visible the often hidden geographies of building infrastructure: sites where materials are extracted, transformed, displaced, and ultimately discarded. The project focuses in particular on documenting and understanding surplus masses - vast quantities of soil from large construction sites regarded as waste - and explores their potential as active architectural resources.