The Design Research Lab is a laboratory for experimental design and research reflecting on the digital society. Through playful interventions, critical making and collaborative reasoning we investigate possible futures. As a platform and network, we are deeply involved with the requirements and policies needed for an inclusive and sustainable development of the digital society from a design perspective.
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).
Florian studied communication design at the University of Applied Sciences Mainz (Diplom FH) and at the Art Department of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. He went on to complete an M.F.A. in Design at the Sandberg Institute (Gerrit Rietveld Academie) in Amsterdam, an M.A. in integrated design at the Köln International School of Design in Cologne, and wrote his Ph.D. in the field of Design Research at the UdK Berlin. Since 2008 he has been initiating sociopolitical design projects with institutions in the field of critical media and political advocacy, carrying out field research in Europe, as well as in the Middle East, East and West Africa.
He has taught critical approaches to design and design methods at amongst other places the Köln International School of Design, the UdK Berlin, and as a visiting professor at the international Master program in Integrated Design at the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences in Dessau. Currently he is a visiting professor at the Technische Universität Berlin / Einstein Center Digital Future, as well as heading a research group on critical making at the UdK Berlin / Weizenbaum Institute together with Michelle Christensen.