I'm a transition designer, researcher and performer working towards transformative adaptation and imagination.
I'm a founding member of the Urban Heat Studio and a postdoctoral researcher at the die Angewandte in Vienna.

Experiential Intervention
HEATCON

Future Scenario
URBAN HEAT ISLAND LIVING

Writing
COLLECTIVE CLIMATE IMAGINATION

Talk
APOCALYPSE!!! Not – How not to be an idiot designing for climate futures

Design
CLIMATE RESILIENT & CIRCULAR INTERIORS

Comedy
STANDUP & IMPROV

A couple of projects I'd love to work on in the year to come

Looking for project partners in futures, anticipation and imagination to craft systemic interventions in collective organizations. Please reach out, and tell your favorite collaborators about me. Thanks 🫰

Futures, Anticipation, Imagination

Explore short- and long-term futures to understand risks and opportunities, build anticipation, and imagine alternatives. I’ve explored futures of climate & overlapping crises, housing, local economies and AI, among others. This work could lead to:🗺 New strategies (plural – to respond to different eventualities)
📖 Research reports
💬 Guided conversations
🏔 New visions and narratives

Dream projects

🌈 Post-East imaginaries: 30% of people in Germany are from more than just Germany, many are already in the 2nd or 3rd generation – challenging the expectations towards migrants and what it means to be local –, and we can expect more migration to come. I’m particularly interested in the futures of the “Post-Ost” community, and connecting it with migration from other places.

🥽 AI Cyberthreats: The concentration of AI poses a serious threat to cybersecurity, and would be able to make brittle food and energy systems crash within days. Understand risks from AI in essential aspects of life, and explore responses.

Systemic Interventions

Design and stage interventions that disrupt undesirable systems and re-orient towards other visions. I’ve staged gatherings to envision and embody more resilient futures, a pop-up cooling center, a future communication campaign about extreme heat, and designed a data-driven tool to find sites for solar electrification that has been used by decision makers worldwide. This work could lead to:🌆 New services and systems
📝 Anticipatory policies
🕸 Anticipatory communities & organizations
🏄 Experiential visions of preferable futures

Dream projects

🏘 Experiential Intervention for Housing: Berlin’s housing has experienced an immense increase in demand, heightening challenges, and power imbalances within the system. Rapidly prototype a series of experiential futures of housing with existing and emerging system players to craft new visions and policies, and activate organizations and communities.

❄️ Climate resilient, communal, and joyful interior design: I’ve spent the last half year re-designing my two-room Altbau apartment to be joyful, functional, spacious, communal, energy efficient, cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Give me a room and your needs, some wood and paint, I’ll bring the sketch block and power tools to make it happen

Collective Organizations

Build organizations that center collective ways of working and decision making, incl. flexible hierarchies, values & principles, rhythms, and other structures, to allow for more joyful, resilient and interdependent ways to create and organize. I’ve co-designed an imagination collective that values gracious emergence, being extraordinarily untraditional, and doing our best work. This could lead to:🏕 Defining values & principles, and translating them into team rituals
🏵 Building anti-discriminatory structures (also awareness & first aid for (past) cases of discrimination)
🪩 New working rhythms and structures that work for different personalities & needs
🐙 Creating space for imagination & multiple, co-existing visions of futures

Dream projects

🎭 Rapid futures prototypers: Gather a team of imagineer-improvisers, rapidly exploring and showing alternative worlds to our systems of injustice today and evolving (more-than-)human relationships, and utilize humour to release tensions

🔮 Neighborhoods imagining together: Work with a neighborhood or community organization to uncover assumptions about futures, create shared visions, and cultivate an anti-discriminatory space for curiosity and imagination

I love to create spaces to explore and navigate the emotional and collective complexity of the polycrisis. I am a co-founder and member of the Urban Heat Studio and a postdoctoral researcher at die Angewandte, Vienna. Drawing on 15+ years across climate, systems, futures, design and art, I specialize in translating abstract social and ecological change into tangible, embodied experiences.I help organizations and communities navigate overlapping crises around the climate crisis. I help them explore long-term risks and adaptation measures that require time to build. I bring people together to prototype futures through immersive theater and experiential scenarios, uncovering emotional responses. I prioritize establishing trust and creating space for playfulness. Serious projects require play, and I take play very seriously – on each project, I like to first gather the right playteam, and set up our playground. I thrive in collective, co-creative environments that value flexible hierarchies, interdependence and open communication.Along with Francesca Desmarais, I co-founded Urban Heat Studio, an imagination collective for transformative climate adaptation. We gather people together to break down the time barriers between climate impacts tomorrow and the structures and injustices today that make us brittle in the face of planetary-wide change. In our work, we seek out gracious emergence, being extraordinary unconventional, and doing our best work.Since 2021, I've hosted HeatCon, an annual gathering to envision and embody radically resilient climate futures for European cities. This seriously playful approach brings climate scenarios to life through immersive experiences, allowing participants to explore climate futures from 30-50 years ahead while identifying the mindset shifts and actions needed today.As a performer, I do standup and play improv comedy with three teams: Daisy Chain, We Got it On Tape, and the newest House Team at the Comedy Cafe Berlin, set to premiere in early 2026. I most enjoy comedy that explores the contradictions of dominant narratives and power dynamics.When not working on climate futures or performing, you'll find me at Comedy Café Berlin where I work part-time as a barkeeper, house manager, and show tech.

📷 Jana Margarete Schuler & Kompetenzzentrum Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft des Bundes

Key Projects & Partnerships

Select Talks

  • 2025. Social Art & Innovation Festival, SRH Berlin. Envisioning Futures (panel)

  • 2025. TU Dresden, What AI could do for climate, what it can't, and how it could

  • 2025. die Angewandte, Zentrum Fokus Forschung, Collective Climate Imagination

  • 2024. TU Eindhoven, HeatCon: Designing an experiential gathering for climate adaptation practitioners and creatives

  • 2024. die Angewandte, Language Arts, Improvisation as a starting point in theater

  • 2024. Media Lab Bayern, Investigatives Design (Investigative Design).

  • 2024 / 2023 / 2022 die Angewandte, Zentrum Fokus Forschung, Public Colloquium

  • 2023. Re:publica & CityLab Kiezlabor, Was Kostet Die Stadt? (How much is the city?)

  • 2022. Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt. Futuring & Climate Adaptation

  • 2022. German Government’s Centre of Excellence for the Cultural and Creative Industries. Netzdialog #9: Climate Futures

  • 2020. Uroboros Festival. Urban Climate Futures

  • 2020. Interaction20 / IXDA Berlin / Service Design Drinks Berlin, APOCALYPSE!!!1! Not – How not to be an idiot designing for climate futures

Select Writing & Publications

Select Exhibitions & Installations

  • 2025. Die Angewandte, Zentrum Fokus Forschung. Collective Climate Imagination

  • 2023 / 2022. CityLab KiezLabor / Welfare Congress of the German Red Cross – DRK Wohlfahrtskongress. Cooling Center

  • 2023. Die Angewandte, Zentrum Fokus Forschung. Public Colloquium. Urban Heat Island Living

  • 2021. Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst: As Above, So Below / Berlin Art Week. Urban Heat Island Living

  • 2020. DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Uroboros Festival, WfH 2026 (Working from Home)

  • 2019. Design Museum / South London Gallery, SOS. TYST

Select Performances

  • 2024. Rimini Protokoll + Sasha Waltz & Guests, Spiegelneuronen

  • 2023 / 2022 / 2021. CIRCE / KKKW / Nordic Sustainability / untitled conference by Demos Helsinki / nGbK. HeatCon

  • 2023 / 2021 / 2019. Stone Soup. Sad Party

  • 2022. Kaimera Lab. on displacement

  • 2018. Stone Soup. The New Experientialism

  • 2017. ACUD MACHT NEU, School of Machines. BarGeld

Awards, Grants & Commissions

  • 2024. INTRA, die Angewandte. Grantee, Collective Ecosystems Imagination

  • 2024. Art in the Underground, neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst. Finalist, Passing

  • 2023. Kultur- und KreativpilotInnen, The German Government’s Award for Creative Innovators. Nominee, Urban Heat Studio

  • 2023. Research Lab Berlin, Creative Impact Research Centre Europe (CIRCE). HeatCon 2023

  • 2023. Circular Together, Impact Hub Berlin. Grantee, Urban Heat Studio

  • 2022. Creative Lab: Climate Futures, German Government's Centre of Excellence for the Cultural and Creative Industries Heat Resilient Cities Conference 2039

  • 2021. Art in the Underground, neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst. Winner, Urban Heat Island Living: Berlin-Neukölln

  • 2014. PROSA, LMU University of Munich, Scholarship for Research Stay at MIT

Teaching

  • Prague City University, Module Leader & Instructor, Critical Writing in Critical Times. 2021–present

  • Utrecht University, Copernicus Institute for Sustainable Development, Instructor, Global Integration Project. 2021

  • Amsterdam University of the Arts, Guest Instructor, Urban Climate Futures. 2021

  • LMU University of Munich, Tutor, Interaction Design. 2016

  • LMU University of Munich, Guest Lecturer, Design Research. 2016

  • Center for Digital Technology and Management, Course Leader, Art & Technology. 2015

Select Workshops

  • 2024. Creative Impact Research Centre Europe / Kompetenzzentrum Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft des Bundes. Collective Ecosystems Imagination

  • 2023. CityLab Kiezlabor. Urban Climate Futuring

  • 2022. Welfare Congress of the German Red Cross. Extreme Heat Resilience

  • 2022. Climate KIC & Kompetenzzentrum Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft des Bundes. Urban Heat Resilience

  • 2020. Climate KIC. Climate Futures Literacy

  • 2019. Our Ocean UN Conference & Sustainable Ocean Alliance. Systemic Design Bootcamp

  • 2019 / 2018 / 2017. Impact Week Jordan / Nigeria / Colombia. Design for Social Impact.

Select Press & Publications

Education

  • die Angewandte, Design Investigations, PhD

  • LMU University of Munich, Human Computer Interaction & Environmental Studies, MSc

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Media Lab

  • Center for Digital Technology and Management, Technology Management, Hons

  • LMU University of Munich, Communication & Psychology, BA

  • Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Psychology

  • CEU San Pablo Madrid, Audiovisual Communication