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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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Dr. Florian Conradi
Senior Researcher
Florian Conradi is a designer and researcher combining critical theory and design as an approach to design research. Currently he co-heads the research group Design, Diversity and New Commons at the Berlin University of the Arts / Weizenbaum Institute, and teaches as a visiting professor for Design Research and Critical Design at the Institute of Theater Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Einstein Center Digital Future.
He studied art and design at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam (MFA), the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, the Köln International School of Design in Cologne (MA), 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, political advocacy and artistic research, carrying out field research in Europe, the Middle East, East and West Africa. As a researcher he has worked for the Design Research Lab, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), and from 2018-2022 he lead the research group Critical Maker Culture at the UdK Berlin (Weizenbaum Institute) together with Michelle Christensen.
He has taught critical approaches to design and design methods as a visiting professor at the international Master program in Integrated Design (MAID) at the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences in Dessau (2018/19, 2024/25) and as a visiting professor for Open Science/Critical Design at the Institute of History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Literature at the Technische Universität Berlin and the ECDF (2019-2024). Since 2024 he is a Principal Investigator at the Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity (HU Berlin) and since 2022 he is a board member of the Berlin Open Lab (UdK Berlin / TU Berlin).