Design Research / Critical Design
Florian Conradi is a designer and researcher, combining critical theory and design as an approach to design research. Drawing on methods of performative design and artistic research, he applies the means and principles of ad-hoc transformations and free/open technologies to explore the politics of design.
Since March 2025, he is 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. Together with Michelle Christensen, he furthermore heads the interdisciplinary research group Design, Diversity and New Commons at the Berlin University of the Arts in the framework of the Weizenbaum Institute.
He has taught critical approaches to design at amongst other places the Berlin University of the Arts, as a visiting professor in the international MA program in Integrated Design 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 2022 he is a board member of the Berlin Open Lab (UdK Berlin/TU Berlin) and since 2024 he is a Principal Investigator at research project Object, Space, Agency within the Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).
Florian Conradi studied design and art at the Sandberg Institute (Gerrit Rietveld Academie) in Amsterdam (MFA), the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, the Köln International School of Design (MA), and wrote his Ph.D. (Dr. phil.) in the field of Design Research at the Berlin University of the Arts. 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, the Middle East, East and West Africa. As a research associate, he has worked for the Design Research Lab at the UdK Berlin, German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence, and from 2018-2022 he co-headed the research group Critical Maker Culture at the UdK Berlin/Weizenbaum Institute.
In the framework of his professorship at the Einstein Center Digital Future, Florian Conradi collaborates with Michelle Christensen to explore the potential of research practiced within open lab settings. As a mode of exploration, they initiated the project Critical Inquiry + Design – a transdisciplinary and trans-university terrain that attempts to blur the boundaries of theory and practice, academia and activism, and science and civil society. In this context, students and researchers from different disciplines, institutions and geographies collaborate on project-base, to debate, prototype and formulate commons-based critical perspectives and practices. Based at the Berlin Open Lab, the research, teaching and experimental design practice carried out in the project focuses on feminist/queer, beyond western-centric and postanthropocentric approaches to design.
Within the context of his professorship at the Freie Universität Berlin, he explores the intersection of performativity and design through practice based- and artistic research, curating and teaching. He collaborates with Prof. Dr. Annette Jael Lehmann and her team in the context of the MA program in Culture and Media Management and their activities at metaLAB (FU Berlin/Harvard University/Academy of Arts and Design Basel).