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.

Rather than seeing these materials as residual, the exhibition positions them as part of a territorial and technological system shaped by logistics, regulation, and engineering. Through sampling, testing, and prototyping, the students examine how surplus masses might be transformed into building components and construction systems for future use.

The collaboration with ROM creates a public interface for this investigation. Throughout the period of three weeks, ROM Studio becomes a space where educational practice and public dissemination meet, culminating in presentations the same opening week as for the Oslo Architecture Triennale.