Christian Zöllner, *1981 is an interdisciplinary working designer and educator in the fields of computational design, speculative design and social design. Since 2018 he is professor for experimental design methods at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design. He worked in design studios in Paris and Vienna before he founded the crossdisciplinary media art collective VR/Urban in Berlin. He teached at the Rietveld Academy Amsterdam, HUST Wuhan in China and at the University of the Arts in Berlin where he conducted projects on experimental product development together with Prof. Axel Kufus for more than six years. 2014 and 2017 he was visiting lecturer for Design Fictions at Burg Halle. Beside his academic activities he runs the design and research studio The Constitute together with Sebastian Piatza. Works of The Constitute are multiple awarded and have been exhibited worldwide in Institutions such as MoMA New York, FACT Liverpool, STRP Eindhoven, Medialab Prado Madrid, Quanzhou Media Biennale and Zeche Zollverein Essen.
Christian Zöllner is chairman of the non-profit Fabmobil Association which brings creative technologies to young people in decentralized rural areas in East Germany. He is member of the scientific board of the federal competence center for creative industries and works as a consultant for various cultural institutions.
Lisa Schwalbe is a designer who has been working as an assistant lecturer at Burg Giebichenstein since 2023. Her area of expertise includes social design on the one hand and digital design techniques on the other. After completing her training as a clothing technical assistant in 2013, she founded the sustainable fashion label dreiklangkleidung together with friends in 2014. The label supported a rural textile factory and focused on the exclusively regional production of T-shirts. In 2021 she received her bachelor's degree in industrial design at Burg Giebichenstein. The following year, 2022, her project, which focuses on empowering girls in rural areas, was awarded by the simulplus Mitmachfonds. Since then she has been actively involved in participatory work with young people in rural areas. This topic was concentrated within her Master's degree in 2023. Additionally Lisa has been integrating innovative technologies into her work since 2020. In particular she developed drawings with a pen plotter under the name gridtheline. Her work was published alongside other artists in the book "Tracing the line" in 2023.
