The Design Research Lab is a network of people, organisations, and non-human agents engaged at the intersection of technologies, materials, and social practices. Our aim is to design socially and ecologically sustainable tools, spaces, and knowledge that support people’s participation in a digital society – based on common principles of inclusiveness and respect for the planet. This puts the basic democratic right to take part in the digital sphere into practice. We start our research from individual lifeworlds and the needs of minoritized groups, beyond consumer majorities.
We are an interdisciplinary team of designers, researchers, tech-enthusiasts and critical thinkers from Berlin University of the Arts, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, as well as Einsteincenter Digital Future (ECDF).
ToCaro - Emotionen teilen durch gemeinsames Erleben
Material Interactions
INNOVADE: Digital Democracy for a Changing World. A new European initiative to make online civic participation secure, inclusive and effective.
Digital Sovereignty
Digital Studies
Social Design
The publication aims at empowering design educators, as well as students, NGOs, and other stakeholders to advance social design practices.
Digital Sovereignty
Social Design
What is meaningful change? What does collaboration mean and how can we work towards more inclusive and just futures? The podcast critically discusses aspects that arise in social design, i.e. power asymmetries, temporalities, safe grounds for co-learning and new understandings of knowledge and knowledge production.
Digital Sovereignty
Social Design
The LaLaMo project aims to explore if LLM capabilities built with humans-in-the-loop perform better than those without.
Digital Studies
Development of an augmented reality (AR) model and application visualizing an animated interpreter for German sign language (DGS)
Material Interactions
Social Design
Data Physicalization as a Design Tool for Science Communication
Material Interactions
Social Design
The Ecological Self: Integrating Body Materials and Cycles into the Design Process
Material Interactions
Critical Making + Designing
Digital Sovereignty
Gender Studies
Material Interactions
Objecting the Objectionable: Normative Obscenification of Gender and Sexuality in Digital Governance
IMPORTANT: this course takes place both in Berlin and Manifesta 16 biennale in Ruhrgebiet, Germany. Students need to organize their own transportation to and accommodation in (or around) Essen, Germany
Registration: please send an email to
Critical reflective journey focusing on democracy, local communities and our contribution as designers and artists.
Manifesta 16 centers on the transformation of abandoned, post-war churches in the Ruhr area into spaces for art, dialogue, and community use, using the question “This is not a church: what can it become?” to explore how spaces built for shared beliefs can be reimagined as inclusive environments for connection and renewal when communities decline or fragment. The compact course builds on this hope by bringing together Palestinian, Jewish-Israeli, and German art and design students and faculty from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and Berlin University of the Arts to discuss pedagogy and critique during these difficult times.
We will examine the concept of community, emphasizing that while it creates belonging, it can also enforce exclusion, silence dissent, and reinforce power structures. The course focuses on the question of sanctuary, exploring who receives shelter and protection, and what occurs when civic institutions collapse or turn hostile. This investigation happens at a time when liberal democratic frameworks face sustained assaults through authoritarian rhetoric, police violence against protesters, and shrinking public spaces that narrow the opportunities for critique.
The course encourages students to explore and develop methods for practicing critical discourse and sustaining capacity for dissent, complexity, and the protection of suppressed voices and bodies while maintaining hope. What are the institutions and counter-institutions, forms of democratic interventions, and creative practices available in times where democracy is under pressure?
