Florian Conradi

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. Currently, he is teaching as a visiting professor for Design Research and Critical Design at the Institute of Theater Studies (MA Culture and Media Management) at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Einstein Center Digital Future. Within this framework he explores the intersection of performativity and design through practice-based research, curating and teaching. Furthermore, he co-heads the interdisciplinary research group Design, Diversity and New Commons at the Berlin University of the Arts in the framework of the Weizenbaum Institute.

In 2019 he initiated the project Critical Inquiry + Design in collaboration with Michelle Christensen – 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 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 within the project focuses on feminist/queer, beyond western-centric and postanthropocentric approaches to design.

Since 2008, he has been initiating sociopolitical design projects with institutions in the field of critical media and artistic research in Europe, the Middle East and West Africa. Recent publications include the co-edited volumes NERD – New Experimental Research in Design III (forthcoming from Birkhäuser, 2025) and RE/EMBODIED DATA – Ambiguities of Knowing (forthcoming from adocs, 2025).