As part of the World Design Capital Frankfurt RheinMain 2026, the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics is hosting the discussion series Thinking Design, which approaches design as a complex field of aesthetic and epistemic practice. Under this title, interdisciplinary perspectives from philosophy, aesthetics, art, anthropology, information design, sound studies, and critical design practice are brought together. The series explores how design shapes perception, how it generates knowledge, and how it influences cultural and social processes.

Thinking Design connects the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics’ fundamental research interest in the conditions and effects of aesthetic experience with an expanded scientific focus that incorporates a design dimension. The series understands design not merely as a creative practice, but as a mode of thinking and inquiry as an aesthetic, material, and social act that invariably produces knowledge. In this way, the Institute contributes a scholarly and discursive perspective to the World Design Capital 2026 programme, which conceives of design as a driver of social, cultural, and ecological transformation.