DGTF Conference 2026: Shifting Regimes, Changing Orders
International Conference
Conference as part of World Design Capital Frankfurt RheinMain 2026 (WDC 2026) in collaboration with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Designtheorie und -forschung (DGTF), Kunstgewerbemuseum/Design Campus SKD and Design and Democracy
Ecological urgency, technological acceleration, and political fragmentation destabilize the conditions under which democracy and design unfold. The conference interrogates their entangled trajectories amid shifting normative frameworks and changing regimes of power. It conceives design as a site of democratic contestation and democracy as a designed order, foregrounding their reciprocal capacity to structure imaginaries, practices, and institutions.
As democratic institutions face populist, technocratic, and post-political pressures, design becomes a crucial site of both contestation and possibility. We ask: How do design discourses and practices respond to and co-shape emerging configurations of power, participation, and collective life? What regimes of sense-making, visibility, or action does design enable—or foreclose? How might design contribute to rethinking democratic agency, inclusion, and accountability amid collapsing certainties?
You can finde the program here.
The event is part of WDC 2026. It can also be found on their website. WDC 2026 is funded by the State of Hesse, the City of Frankfurt/Main and the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain.
