Design is much more than product design: Design is an attitude, a way of initiating change and making new solutions conceivable and tangible.

Design contributes to the formation of our world and the way we live together and helps to expand human possibilities of agency and decision making. Afterall, the objects—analog and digital—with which we surround ourselves, which we produce, buy, use, and discard, play a key role in shaping our bodies and our environment. With a thematic tour covering around 2,000 m2, the MAK design lab makes the expanded tasks and new roles of design tangible.

The MAK design lab is a semi-permanent exhibition in the lower level of the museum in which objects from the MAK Collection are placed into a multifaceted historical and contemporary context with loans and new productions in seven thematically organized rooms.

The presented design ideas look into the challenges of the 21st century such as the climate crisis, digitalization, society and democracy. They explore material innovations, circular design, and new possibilities of producing and consuming. The MAK design lab also presents new approaches to designing fair cohabitation in awareness of our interdependence with all species on our planet.

On display are contemporary projects by designers, architects, programmers, and activists that highlight challenges of the present, suggest alternatives, and inspire new solutions. These include projects like a mealworm farm for the future of the food industry, a 3D-printed cargo bike produced in the spirit of circular design, works on activism and counterstrategies to digital surveillance, and also key pieces of design history like the Frankfurt kitchen by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, as part of the presentation on care work.

In the MAK design lab, the focus is placed on design processes that have an impact on our ways of producing and living, habits and systems. With imagination, creativity, and playful experiments, the MAK design lab draws attention to the consequences of our current lifestyle but also to the implications alternative future strategies could have for all of us.