soft assembly is a project exhibition space in a renovated overseas container, located in the center of the TUM campus. The space is hosted and curated by the team of the Chair of Art in Architecture.

our wish is for soft assembly to be a site for emergent kinship and slow futures. A space where temporalities intersect, relations are brought into dialogue, and new modes of attention can develop beyond urgency and constant production. The space is conceived as a platform for reflection, experimentation, and exchange, foregrounding processes that unfold over time rather than immediate resolution.

soft assembly hosts regular exhibitions by professional artists from the national and international network of the Chair of Art in Architecture, presenting contemporary artistic positions that engage with spatial, ecological, and societal questions. Between these exhibitions, the space is activated through student projects and works developed within the semesters, offering insight into ongoing research, learning processes, and emerging practices. Together, these alternating formats position soft assembly as a continuously evolving exhibition space where art, architecture, and thought accumulate, overlap, and remain open to revision.

soft assembly will open officially at the start of the summer semester on 22 April 2026 with a solo show by the artist Simon Mullan.

THE DIRTY ROOM ON GABELSBERGERSTRASSE – A Love Story In Three Acts

Student intervention over 12 weeks
BA experimental creation course, lecturer: Dominik Cosentino

Private View(s): to be announced

Act I (no access)
Act I (no access)
Act I (no access)
Act I (no access)
Act I (no access)

Act II : (almost whispering) how can we continue with what has been left?
Act II : … with what has been made. How was this built?
Act II : it might be a new beginning?
Act II : (silent)*
Act II : there is no new beginning, I think. It’s a kind of continuation and
Act II : … and the stage in between
Act II : will we be forgotten?
Act II : never

*this project explores rhythmical absence, loss, and the ubiquitous significance of dirt through three sequential acts. as control slips from the hand that builds, structure begins to dictate the builder. dirt is reframed as a force that destabilizes hierarchies of artistic intent. rhythmical absence appears as the gap between the human desire for order and the unruly agency of matter.the room functions as a Foucauldian heterotopia, suspending norms of ownership and linear creation. Three groups successively enter the same space, inheriting the residues of prior actions. through this chain of compelled succession, the project becomes an exercise in radical receptivity, revealing the gradual dissolution of authorship

Act III (no access)(wondering in anticipatory expectation)
Act III (no access)
Act III (no access)
Act III (no access)(afraid)
Act III (no access) (reassuring Scene III)