Dagmar Korintenberg Takes on New Interdisciplinary Professorship

Starting in the 2026/27 winter semester, Dagmar Korintenberg will assume the professorship in Visual Communication—with a focus on intermedia applications, collaborative structures, and space—at the School of Design at Pforzheim University. As the school’s first professorship of its kind, it has an interdisciplinary focus and is not assigned to any single degree program. The designer brings many years of experience in the design of communication spaces and is particularly interested in how physical and digital spaces convey knowledge and bring people into dialogue with one another.

Design Practice and Teaching

Korintenberg is a co-founder of the design firm Raumservice, which has been developing communication spaces for knowledge transfer and exchange—in the form of exhibitions, memorial sites, and event concepts—since 2005.

Korintenberg has previously served as a research assistant and adjunct lecturer at Pforzheim University. She has also taught in Stuttgart and Hamburg, among other places, and was a visiting professor at HTWG Konstanz from 2022 to 2023. As a fellow at the AI Campus, she collaborated with colleagues from various disciplines to explore the use of artificial intelligence in higher education. As part of a team for the German Design Club, she developed the “DDC Lab for Female Leadership” and served as jury chair for the “Communication” category in the “Was ist gut” competition.

Korintenberg began her design career with an apprenticeship at the Goldschmiedeschule mit Uhrmacherschule Pforzheim (Pforzheim School of Goldsmithing and Watchmaking), which she completed as a state-certified designer of jewelry and household items. She then studied Visual Communication at Pforzheim University and Experimental Spatial Concepts at the Offenbach University of Art and Design. In 2004, she earned her diploma in Visual Communication with a focus on exhibition design in Pforzheim.

Addressing themes of transformation in communication spaces from an interdisciplinary perspective

Korintenberg understands communication spaces in a broad and contemporary sense, as they are no longer created exclusively in physical form. They can connect analog spaces with digital media and platforms, thereby creating new forms of knowledge exchange. In this way, Korintenberg brings a focus to her teaching that transcends the boundaries of individual disciplines.

Projects that Korintenberg has already implemented at Pforzheim University demonstrate how this can be applied in teaching. Together with Professor Simone Sommer, she developed a project centered on flax in 2025. The students researched this natural material and translated their findings into various design formats.

Another example is “Mirror Machines,” which Korintenberg leads together with Professor Nicole Ondrusch from Heilbronn University. Design students from Pforzheim collaborate on this project with computer science students from Heilbronn. Together, they develop projects that examine artificial intelligence from technical, design, and societal perspectives.

“When we talk about the future of design and teaching, interdisciplinary collaboration is key to working together on complex transformation challenges,” Korintenberg emphasizes.