Chemistry is both a science of transformation and a structure of control. It governs the materials that shape our world—through bonds forged between atoms, and through policies, patents, and industrial standards. Its industry supports countless others, from agriculture to automotive, from textiles to tech. At the same time, the sector is weighed down by stigma—often perceived as a polluting, extractive force—when it is foundational to modern life. But in Romania, the chemical sector also reveals a system in crisis: fragmented infrastructure, underused expertise, and limited space for innovation.

Design Signals—Chemical Bonds confronts this tension. It asks what kinds of design practices are possible when access is restricted, when knowledge is siloed, and when an entire industry operates at the thresholds of visibility. Designers, researchers, companies, and institutions come together to trace how material, labour, and expertise circulate—or stall—across the chemical landscape.

This begins with research: a report by sociologist Norbert Petrovici maps the disintegration of Romania’s once-integrated chemical platforms and the regulatory and structural barriers that prevent innovation. A second phase followed on the ground: over twenty site visits produced interviews, photographs, and documentation that reveal everyday strategies of maintenance, care, and adaptation.

The commissioned design projects work within this complexity: glaze as forensic tool, salt as industrial ritual, bioplastics as surface, and galvanization as gesture. Also on display are outcomes from a schools programme, where design students and tutors explored chemistry’s role in daily life; and a journalistic collaboration investigating Romania’s position in Europe’s green transition—particularly around resource extraction and industrial policy.

Hosted in the former Azur factory, once a soap and varnish production site, the exhibition is designed from repurposed tiles and structural components sourced from chemical facilities. It operates as a lab, archive, and site of public engagement—where design helps make hidden bonds visible, and perhaps renegotiable.

Design Signals—Chemical Bonds does not offer solutions. Instead, it opens a space where new interdependencies might take root. In a sector marked by systemic problems, design is not used to simplify complexity, but to pose deeper questions about how we live with chemistry. The responses are not always clean. But they are necessary.