Lecture
Thursday 22 January 2026
Auditorium Space, 2nd Floor of DAE
Anton Rahlwes
Trying to Make Sense of the World through Design, A Practice of Aha Moments
This lecture is not a hero’s journey, nor a polished success story. It is a reflection on learning by not knowing, on moving forward while feeling unsure, and on the many moments where assumptions shifted. Rather than presenting design as a solution or a promise, I speak about it as a tool I use to make sense of a world that often feels confusing, contradictory, and overwhelming.
The lecture traces my path to where I am now through personal experiences shaped by privilege, fear, vulnerability, and a growing awareness of what I did not understand. Design appears not as a linear career path, but as a practice of noticing tensions, asking better questions, and sitting with uncertainty long enough for small “aha moments” to emerge.
This talk is meant for those who are still figuring things out, who feel the pressure to have answers, and who suspect that clarity often comes later than expected — if at all. It does not offer a dream to buy into, but an honest account of navigating complexity without pretending it disappears.
Anton Rahlwes is a curator and writer working at the intersection of design, aesthetics, and cultural discourse. He is co-founder of the thing Magazine and co-initiator and co-curator of the first CONCEPTUAL Biennale in Berlin, a platform dedicated to practices at the intersection of art, design, and architecture.
His curatorial work includes exhibitions such as FOKUS: Trash at Vienna Design Week (2024) and The Magic Touch: Designing Togetherness for the German Design Graduates initiative at Dutch Design Week (2024), both developed in close collaboration with Nina Sieverding.
From 2020 to 2023, he served as editor-in-chief of form magazine alongside Nina Sieverding, shaping its editorial direction with a focus on design criticism, theory, and expanded notions of practice, grounded in an understanding of design as a field that inherently carries and reproduces intersectional political dimensions.
Earlier in his career, Rahlwes co-founded the Berlin-based furniture label OUT – Objekte unserer Tage, where he contributed to the brand’s visual identity and product development.
