The group exhibition by the Furniture and Interior Design studio at the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art presents the work of students and faculty who, through experiments with materials, explore the properties, transformations, and potential applications of alternative raw materials in contemporary design.

The starting point is not a predefined object, but the material itself and direct experience with it. Its texture, structure, weight, acoustic properties, and ability to shape space become part of the design process. The exhibition therefore encourages not only observation but, above all, direct contact—perceiving with one’s hands, listening to the materials, and seeking new relationships between the body, the object, and space. 

The individual works were created at the intersection of various approaches and disciplines: from tangible thinking—that is, design based on direct experience with materials—through experimental production processes to laboratory research. The internal structures of the materials were analyzed using an electron microscope at the University of West Bohemia (ZČU) research center – New Technologies, while their acoustic properties were tested at the Research and Innovation Center for Electrical Engineering of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the University of West Bohemia.

The studio has long been exploring the versatility of materials and seeking new possibilities for them in contemporary design. Here, the material is not a passive vehicle for the final form, but an active partner in the design process—sometimes predictable, sometimes surprising, but always capable of guiding and transforming the process. 

Keep in Touch is therefore not an exhibition that you simply need to see. It encourages physical interaction, perception through touch and hearing, and more attentive reflection on the materials that surround us every day. What happens when we give a material space to speak?

Curator: Jana Potiron