Area II: DesignerSpace

DesignerSpace is concerned with design practice. To reveal the affordances of mixed reality design environments, the qualities of new tools developed in ToolSpace will be evaluated in a real-life design scenario (DS1), and the effects of new digital design tools on design reasoning and thinking will be investigated in comparison to more traditional design practices (DS2). DesignerSpace integrates both a psychological and an ethnographic approach towards design practice, as well as a combination of field studies and experimental setups. This will be possible through our external research partnerships with local and international architectural practices, designers, design schools, and artist studios, as well as the technical infrastructure of the two design laboratories of the Berlin Open Lab (BOL). This infrastructure has been established by the two universities in anticipation of the proposed Einstein Center. It is the mid-term vision of DesignerSpace to initiate a transformation of design practices, both in dealing with new mixed reality design tools as well as in new forms of cooperation between engineers, designers and artists.