Research
“Coded Objects” Artistic Archival Residency with the Ambiguous Standards Institute (ASI)
Anna-Maria Meister and the Lise Meitner Group “Coded Objects” in collaboration with the saai | Archive for Architecture and Engineering, KIT Karlsruhe and the KHI Historical Archive
“Ambiguous Standards of the Archive: The Taxonomy of the Unknown,” Ambiguous Standards Institute (ASI), 2026. Photo: ASI
In summer 2026, the newly launched “Coded Objects” artistic archival residency brought Cansu Cürgen and Avşar Gürpınar (both of Loughborough University) to the saai | Archive for Architecture and Engineering, KIT Karlsruhe and the KHI Historical Archive (KHIA) in Florence. In this first artistic residency in both archives, the artists further developed the research and practice of their Ambiguous Standards Institute (ASI), a semi-fictional art and design platform that investigates culturally embedded categories through objects. From tea glasses to travel adapters, power sockets, kitchen utensils, and LED timers, ASI assembles everyday objects to reveal the often-invisible systems shaping sensory, cultural, and social life.
During June and July, the archival objects of the KHIA and the saai collections provided the source material for their probing: in archives, ambiguous standards appear in every corner, shelf, box, and folder. Developing the project in conversation with the Lise Meitner Group, ASI created an "archival" crate that speaks from (and into) archival processes and objects.
Artists’ statement about their new artwork “Ambiguous Standards of the Archive: The Taxonomy of the Unknown”:
The unknown co-exists in the archive alongside the known: under ambiguous standards, sometimes categorized through negative categories or cryptic denotations, and is subject to the same possibilities of becoming known or remaining unknown.
The unknown is ambiguous in how it is unknown: whether through missingness, unresolved identity, or suspended systematization. The unknown comes in various forms, with spectral qualities, existing within or surrounding an archive and with varying degrees of unknowability.
“Ambiguous Standards of the Archive” probes and develops a taxonomy of the unknown, using the archival containers as vessels of unknownledge: the knowledge of the unknown.
On 7 July 2026, Cansu Cürgen and Avşar Gürpınar presented their artistic practice and methodology of assembling archival crates filled with collected objects in the Lise Meitner Group's series "The Making Of" in Florence.
Photos: Ambiguous Standards Institute (ASI)
This residency coincided with the second round of the international residency program at saai in cooperation with Wüstenrot Foundation, where three international scholars investigated archival materials at the saai to ask how architectural "schools" emerge, operate, and affect architecture production. In July, the fellows of the saai | iaas residencies, along with the artists of the “Coded Objects” artistic archival residency, presented their archival findings, ongoing research, and methods in a joint public workshop at the A SF Architekturschaufenster in Karlsruhe. During the public workshop with guests from Florence and Karlsruhe, iaas fellow Ezgi İşbilen delved into Konrad Wachsmann’s materials and analyzed his international trajectory and seminar series. Meanwhile, Phoebus Panigyrakis expanded his project of a public digital database on architectural periodicals, emphasizing architectural education in German journals. In a lecture performance that will become a short film, Miljana Niković explored the patterns in school’s interior design while examining the materiality and media qualities of diapositives. The "Coded Objects" residents Cansu Cürgen and Avşar Gürpınar—a.k.a. the Ambiguous Standards Institute—presented a work-in-progress of their new archival crate.
In July, the fellows of the saai | iaas residencies, along with the artists of the “Coded Objects” artistic archival residency, presented their archival findings, ongoing research, and methods in a joint public workshop at the A SF Architekturschaufenster in Karlsruhe. Photos: Anna Luise Schubert
Collaborators:
KHI Historical Archive (Katia Mazzucco)
saai | Archive for Architecture and Engineering (Anna-Maria Meister, Joaquín Medina Warmburg, Doris Hallama, Eva Just, Martin Kunz, Joshua Silver, Mechthild Ebert, Isa-Katrin Strunk, Doris Gadinger)
Lise Meitner Group “Coded Objects” (Anna-Maria Meister, Anna Luise Schubert, Mimi Cheng, Azar Emami Pari)
