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).
Berit joined the Design Research Lab in 2016, and is part of the Connected Textiles Group. Her work focuses on engineering design methods and fabrication techniques for electronic textiles, combining crafts with novel manufacturing technologies. Her aim is to initiate innovation in textile design by repurposing scientific methods and procedures, and transform them into functional and poetic artefacts.
She completed a diploma degree in Textile and Surface Design at Berlin Weissensee School of Art, and an MA in Design for Textile Futures at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. She has gained a PhD at the Doctoral Training Centre (DTC) for Media and Arts Technology at Queen Mary University of London, in which she designed and analysed three-dimensional textile metamaterials.