Experiments in Process. Paradigm shift: Teaching Architecture and Design in the Department of Building at the HfG Ulm

• Applicant: Dr. Chris Dähne
• Subject Area: Architecture, Building and Construction History, Construction Research, Sustainable Building Technology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 558364066

The Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm (1953-1968) is considered one of the most innovative educational institutions of the early Federal Republic of Germany. The school focused on industrial design, visual communication and product design. It is above all the graphic and product design objects that have become known and that today belong to the international canon of design history. On the other hand, the experimental and theoretically based work of the Building/Bauen department under the direction of the architect and designer Herbert Ohl remains largely unexplored and thus represents a significant missing link in the history of 20th century architecture. The fascination of the works lies in the utopian potential of a prototypically designed architecture, from the macrocosmic to the microcosmic, with which the department produced technical visions using a specific design method. The basis for this was the so-called 'Ulm Concept', in which then highly topical scientific disciplines such as cybernetics, systems and information theory enriched the methodological apparatus for architectural design, which was to be developed according to the principle of scientific experimentation. Design decisions were not made on the basis of creative intuition, but on the basis of a rigorous methodology and scientifically validated information. The innovation of the Building Department lies in the synthesis of engineering and natural, human and social sciences of the 'Ulm Concept', which introduced new methods of integral design - with the aim of making architecture scientific, interdisciplinary and socially responsible. The research project investigates these consistent approaches of a design theory oriented towards science and technology and an architectural concept shaped by the key figure Ohl. An essential basis for this is the first-ever review and processing of Ohl's estate, which further developed initial ideas of an industrialization of architecture by Konrad Wachsmann and founded the Institute for Industrialized Building in 1960. The overall aim of the project is to fill a sensitive gap in the history of 20th-century architecture by reassessing the development of the Building Department, and to secure for the HfG an appropriate place in the historiography of international schools of architecture. In addition, the influence of the 'Ulmer Concept' with its specific methodological approach on the design work of the HfG Ulm is to be analysed and reconstructed, on the one hand, and examined with regard to its impact on international trends such as the "Design Methods Movement", on the other. The proposed internationally networked research project is intended to remedy the desideratum of the still invisible history of the impact and internationality of the Building department and to reveal the traces of the department's impact up to the present day.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants