Real-world labs are among the most prominent forms of transformative sustainability research. They aim to initiate social transformation, provide accompanying research, and enable the related learning processes. Participants in the real-world lab see themselves as part of the intended transformation.

In the work of real-world labs, there is still a lack of appropriate reflection on technology and technology design in the context of societal transformation processes. Real-world labs either operate separately from technical inventions or these inventions are taken for granted, while the design process focuses on the societal practices related to the technology. When technical innovation processes are considered, this is often done with an uncritical understanding of technology – the focus then being on the funding and societal implementation of certain technologies (e.g., real-world labs of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action).

However, modern societies are deeply influenced by technology. It permeates all areas of life and proves to be extremely ambivalent: sometimes helpful and part of the solution, sometimes harmful and part of the problem. Therefore, a profound change in society is inconceivable without a change in technology (embedded in eco-socio-technical systems). This also includes a change in technological design processes.

Technology assessment originates from the crucial significance of technology for modern societies and attempts to contribute to an (often also explicitly sustainability-oriented) technology design. It applies a sophisticated methodology for anticipating and evaluating possible impacts of technology, based on a socio-theoretically and philosophically reflected understanding of technology. Various TA concepts cover a wide range of possible societal starting points for technology design. In contrast to real-world labs, TA has not yet been working experimentally and its own role is rarely understood as part of the transformation.

Against this background, the aim of the explorative focus project is the conception and operationalization of a “Reflective real-world lab for sustainable technology design” (RENATA) and thus a methodological synthesis of real-world lab research and TA. This should, on the one hand, add the aspects of technology reflection and design to the concept of the “real-world lab” format. On the other hand, TA should be enhanced in theoretical, methodological, and practical terms in the context of real-world labs as “experimental TA.” To do so, the project builds on the real-world lab discourse of the last 12 years, the expertise of KAT, and the insights gained from District Future and combines them with concepts and methods of technology assessment and related approaches that include the reflection on technology.

The long-term goal is to implement such a real-world lab that reflects on technology as a prototype of a novel transdisciplinary large-scale research infrastructure to design eco-socio-technical systems. In this way, it can provide modern societies with an opportunity to increase the degree of rationality in technology design and make technology an integral part of a transformation toward sustainability.

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