NERD 7th Heaven – New Experimental Research in Design (November 6 – 7, 2025, Berlin)

This year’s NERD Conference, organized by BIRD – the Board of International Research in Design will take place at New Practice / MA Design and Computation, Technische Universität Berlin & Berlin University of the Arts on November 6–7, 2025.

The unique epistemic and innovative potential of Design Research is increasingly recognized across the academic landscape and is in growing demand from institutions, businesses, and policymakers alike. By bridging traditionally separate forms of practice and modes of knowledge, Design Research occupies a distinctive position – one that challenges clear disciplinary boundaries, formal conventions, and implicit assumptions about secured knowledge and linear progress in traditional research fields.

Embracing this inherent openness as a strength, the New Experimental Research in Design (NERD) conference serves as a truly inclusive platform for showcasing, discussing, and critically examining the diverse ways in which design’s unique perspectives and capabilities can be employed as a research competence. NERD features contributions from researchers worldwide, spanning all areas of Design Research, with a particular focus on empirical and experimental projects that demonstrate originality – or even boldness – in their choice of topics and methodological approaches.

The conference’s emphasis on empirical and experimental work reflects our conviction that the discourse on the value and potentials of Design Research should be led by example: What constitutes an effective method or approach only becomes evident when put into practice. For this reason, NERD also does not adhere to any predefined topics or schools of thought, recognizing that the qualitatively new transcends established categories.

Developed and realized by BIRD – the Board of International Research in Design, which publishes the book series of the same name at Birkhäuser – as an annual event with changing venues, NERD has firmly established itself and proven its productivity as a conference format, now entering its seventh iteration.

This year’s conference, NERD 7th Heaven, will take place at the studio of New Practice in Art and Technology, the research platform of the inter-institutional Master’s program Design and Computation at Technische Universität Berlin and Berlin University of the Arts.

REGISTRATION: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/boardofinternationalresearchindesign/1786225

Venue
Alter Lesesaal / New Practice
TU Berlin Main Building
Straße des 17. Juni 135
10623 Berlin
Directions

PROGRAMME
Day 1 / 6 November 2025
10:00
Registration snf Coffee

10:30
Introduction
Welcome: Albert Lang (New Practice) & Marc Pfaff (BIRD / New Practice)
Opening Address: Wolfgang Jonas (BIRD)

11:00
INTELLIGENT IMAGINATIONS
Chair: t.b.d.

Co-Desirable AI Futures
Freyja van den Boom (University of Antwerp)

Real, False-Worlds: Using a Truth Hidden at the Centre of Generative AI Image-Making for Design and Speculative World-Building
David Normington (The Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wroclaw)

12:30
Lunch Break

13:45
INSTITUTIONAL INTERVENTIONS
Chair: Tom Bieling (BIRD / HfG Offenbach)

Designing the Small Democracy of Rathlin Island
Brian Morgan (Belfast School of Art)

Institutional Disorientations: Spirallings of a Design Practice within Entrenched Infrastructures
Isabella Brandalise (Monash University, Australia)

15:15
Coffee Break

16:00
ECOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS Chair:
Michelle Christensen (BIRD / TU Berlin / UdK Berlin)

New Weather TV: Towards Ecological Imaginaries and Realities of the Mainstream Weather Report
Simone Fehlinger (Saint-Étienne School of Art and Design / University of Strasbourg / University of Potsdam)

Seed, Potato, Pixel: Exploring Interspecies Relations between Ants, Humans, and Algorithms
Lilli-Chiara Kurth / Alessandro Mac-Nelly / Mika Zoé Rosenberg / Max Baraitser Smith (Berlin University of the Arts / Technische Universität Berlin)

17:30
Short Break

17:45
BIRD Book Launch: ‘NERD III’ & ‘Nutzen statt Besitzen – revisited’

18:00
KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Manifesto Madness
Peter Friedrich Stephan (Academy of Media Arts Cologne)

Day 2 / 7 November 2025
09:30
Coffee

09:45
Short Introduction to the Day

10:00
POST/DIGITAL PARADIGMS
Session Host: Marc Pfaff (BIRD / New Practice)

Postdigital Neobaroque (PDNB): A Plurivocal Architectural Design Research Project
Marjan Colletti (University of Innsbruck)

What Even is Design(ed) in Generative World Models? Extending The Interactive Paradigm of Computation
Lars Pinkwart (University of Zurich / Zurich University of the Arts)

11:30
Coffee Break

12:00
EMBODIED ENCOUNTERS
Session Host: t.b.d.

Grasping Knowledge: Designing Tangible Devices for Gesture-Based Inquiry
Fabiana Marotta / Lorenzo Esposito (University of Naples Federico II)

12:45
Lunch Break

14:00
Decentered Discourses
Session Host: Uta Brandes (BIRD)

Democracy by Design? Exploring the Political Potentials of Design Theory for Democratic Innovation
Felix Kosok (German International University, Berlin)

Designs from Southwomen: Historicizing Ecuadorian Women’s Lifeworlds
Ana Belén Palacios (Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW / University of Arts Linz)

Omitted Needless Words
Evija Krištopane (Synstitute, Amsterdam)

16:15 Closing Discussion

17:00 End of Conference

Admission to the conference will be free of charge.
Pre-registration (required for planning reasons): see above
The conference will be held in English.

We are pleased to present the books ‘NERD – New Experimental Research in Design III – Positions and Perspectives’ and ‘Nutzen statt Besitzen – revisited’ at the conference.

Conference Website: https://www.newpractice.net/nerd-7th-heaven
BIRD Website: https://www.bird-international-research-in-design.org