tomás saraceno transforms munich’s haus der kunst

tomás saraceno transforms munich’s haus der kunst

Tomás Saraceno turns Munich’s Haus der Kunst into an ecosystem of floating sculptures, spiderweb architectures, Indigenous knowledge, and speculative environmental design with Ancestral Futures, opening July 17, 2026. The exhibition — Saraceno’s largest ever staged in Germany — traces nearly two decades of research across art, architecture, natural sciences, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge, proposing new ways of living with, rather than above, the planet.

Rather than presenting individual artworks, Ancestral Futures unfolds as an interconnected environment under the theme ‘In Collaboration’. Air-powered sculptures drift through the galleries, microscopic spider vibrations become immersive soundscapes, and collaborative installations developed with Indigenous communities in northern Argentina transform the museum into a site where ecological justice, architecture, and activism converge. Throughout the exhibition, Saraceno asks visitors to reconsider their relationships with air, water, land, and the countless more-than-human species that shape shared environments.

Tomás Saraceno at Haus der Kunst | all images Agostino Osio unless otherwise stated

sanctuary of water developed with indigenous community

At its heart is Towards the Sanctuary of Water (2026), an expansive new environment developed alongside the Indigenous Red Atacama network of the Salinas Grandes in northern Argentina. More than a gallery installation, the project forms part of a permanent land artwork, The Sanctuary of Water, currently under construction using traditional Andean building techniques. Once completed, the structure will belong to the eleven Indigenous communities who initiated the project, helping protect fragile salt lakes threatened by industrial lithium extraction while supporting local ecotourism and cultural stewardship. In an unusual move, Haus der Kunst is directly contributing to the realization of the work beyond the museum itself, allowing the exhibition to generate a tangible environmental impact.

El Santuario del Agua Salinas Grandes, 2026 | image by Studio Tomás Saraceno

saraceno imagines collaborative post-carbon futures

The exhibition also brings together Saraceno’s two defining long-term research initiatives: Aerocene, his vision for fossil-fuel-free flight, and Arachnophilia, an ongoing collaboration with spiders that explores communication, behaviour, material intelligence, and architecture across species. Together, they frame air and webs not simply as metaphors but as infrastructures for imagining post-carbon futures rooted in reciprocity rather than extraction.

Visitors first encounter Museo Aero Solar, an ever-evolving flying museum assembled collectively from reused plastic bags by participants across six continents since 2007. Rather than a finished object, the work remains an open-source sculpture that grows with every new exhibition, embodying Saraceno’s idea of the Aerocene — an era centred on air as a shared commons instead of fossil-fuel dependence. Suspended only by sunlight and thermal currents, its aerosolar sculptures propose flight not as a symbol of speed or technological domination but as an exercise in collective care, coexistence, and environmental imagination.

Museo Aero Solar is an ever-evolving flying museum assembled collectively from reused plastic bags

non-human entities form part of large-scale exhibition

Elsewhere, Saraceno shifts scale dramatically. Intricate spiderwebs from the ‘Webs of At-tent(s)ion’ series and the immersive installation ‘Algo-R(h)i(y)thms’ invite visitors into vibrational worlds usually inaccessible to humans. Here, the frequencies of orb-weaver spiders are presented alongside electromagnetic signals from distant galaxies, suggesting that every living system — from microscopic webs to cosmic space — operates through shared rhythms. Even a series of scent-based paintings created specifically for dogs challenges the dominance of human vision, encouraging visitors to imagine perception through other species.

The exhibition extends beyond the museum galleries. On the east terrace, ‘Cloud Cities: Species of Spaces and Other Pieces’ introduces twelve floating cloud-like chambers inspired by cumulonimbus formations. Conceived as living architecture, the suspended structures are designed not for people alone but as habitats for birds, insects, spiders, and other urban species, continuing Saraceno’s long-running vision of cities shared between humans and non-humans.

Saraceno invites visitors to explore microscopic spider vibrations as an immersive soundscape

haus der kunst infrastructure becomes artwork

Around the museum, Haus der Kunst opens a new community garden while guided walks with researchers from the Max Planck Society explore the ecological landscape surrounding the Eisbach and the English Garden. Visitors will also participate in workshops to build a new ‘Museo Aero Solar’, with plans to launch the collaboratively assembled solar sculpture later this autumn.

Even the museum’s infrastructure becomes part of the exhibition. ‘Flashing Toilets’ reconfigures the building’s plumbing so water used for handwashing is reused for flushing, reducing annual consumption by an estimated one million litres. It is a modest intervention, but one that reflects Saraceno’s broader proposition: environmental change begins not only through monumental gestures but also through redesigning everyday systems.

the museum’s community garden and ‘Cloud Cities: Species of Spaces and Other Pieces’ on the east terrace

‘the future is already here’ as guiding principle for show

Inspired by Brazilian Indigenous philosopher Ailton Krenak’s proposition that ‘the future is already here, woven into the landscape like a river,’ Ancestral Futures ultimately positions architecture, science, art, and Indigenous knowledge as intertwined practices. Rather than imagining distant technological futures, Saraceno proposes that more equitable ecological futures already exist within the relationships between air, water, animals, landscapes, and the communities working to protect them.

Saraceno proposes that more equitable ecological futures already exist