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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Sénamé Koffi Agbodjinou
Alumni
Architect and anthropologist by training, Sénamé Koffi Agbodjinou advocates a neovernacular concept that he concretely translates as an innovator, designer and entrepreneur at the scale of the product, building and city. He is the founder of L’Africaine d’Architecture, a collaborative platform for research and experimentation on issues of African architecture and cities. He is also the founder of WoeLabs, a network of Togolese tech-hubs that aim to ‘make everyone equal in the face of the digital revolution’. With his community, he contributes to prototyping a Digital Collectivism, which has made it possible to launch half a dozen startups. In his work, he develops alternative visions on the issues of integrated architecture, primitive computationalities, technological democracy and sustainable cities. His work has been acknowledged by amongst others the African Innovation Summit (2014), the Global Fab Award (2014), the Ashoka Foundation (Fellow since 2017) and the African Leadership Award (2018).