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).
Blanca is an architect graduated in 2012 from the Technical School of Architecture of Seville and currently based in Berlin. With a strong interest in the construction of imageries and meaning of the city and its public spaces, she seeks to explore architecture through a wider perspective. Currently she is studying an M.A. program in «Art in Context» in the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) with a main focuses on artistic practice in the public space and art as a research practice. Since January 2016 she works in the Design Research Lab collaborating in the the EU-funded project MAZI (CAPS/H2020).