We
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).
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Community Now?
Community Now? is an interdisciplinary research project between the German Society for Design Theory and Research (DGTF), the Design Research Lab/UdK and the Academy for Art and Design, funded by the Future Forum Foundation (DIZF) and in partnership with the Jewish Museum Berlin, Goethe-Institut Tel Aviv and Hansen Center Jerusalem. What does intercultural Community Building mean today? How can we connect engaged communities from Jerusalem and Berlin? The aim of the project is to develop, together with existing civic initiatives, design tools and strategies that strengthen the structures of the communities and give them a new public. Through digital formats and local interventions like Living Labs, “Community Now?” develops alternative ways of empowerment and political participation. Beyond the familiar themes of diplomatic relations between Israel and Germany, we are interested in the understanding of individual citizens and in their commitment. We aim to establish students tandem and an interdisciplinary collaboration between designers, artists, scientists, public institutions and civil society initiatives. The results lead to exhibitions, interventions in public space and in the museum context, Living Labs, interdisciplinary symposia in Berlin and Jerusalem as well as in a subsequent publication.
Projects that were realised within the Community Now? project:
Symposium: Community Now? The Politics of Participatory Design