Coburg University of Applied Sciences and Arts

The study module is devoted to the subject of Otl Aicher, one of the most formative German designers of the 20th century. He set up the Ulm Design College in 1953 together with his wife Inge Aicher-Scholl and the architect and artist Max Bill. He would have turned 100 last year. The Coburg University of Applied Sciences and Arts has joined forces with diverse architects, interior designers and hardware designers from FSB to grapple with Aicher’s vast oeuvre in depth. They have been discovering and analysing his interdisciplinary outpourings, his texts, ideas and theories, in the course of talks and practical work and, building on this, have evolved coherent conceptual blueprints of their own.

Participants have gained important insights into their built environment in general and into the interdisciplinary input of one of the most formative German designers of the 20th century in particular in the course of the study module. They have honed their powers of spatial imagination, expanded their general knowledge, increased their grasp of salient areas of architecture, interior design and product design, as well as of the ways in which they intermesh, and have also learnt how to informatively present their material.

The remit involved students analysing Otl Aicher‘s interdisciplinary work, his texts, ideas and theories, and using their findings to evolve coherent conceptual blueprints of their own in the form of experimental, three-dimensional objects, sculptures or models.

The scope of Otl Aicher’s intellectual legacy confronting the interdisciplinary group of Architecture, Interior Design and Product Design students was such that they initially found it difficult to confine themselves to individual aspects. In due course, however, the students’ individual projects became ever more clearly defined, their variety underlining just how multifaceted Aicher’s work is in its entirety.

The participating students encountered no end of stimulating ideas in Otl Aicher’s profound texts. They set about finding material for concepts, texts, product ideas and at the end even for a comic. All of these various approaches were harnessed to the task of examining Aicher’s legacy, gauging it against the world of today, and both lauding and criticising it. In the sphere of interior design and specifically the kitchen, Aicher’s teachings were adjudged to still be of great relevance to the modern age.

Our eyes were additionally opened by an assemblage drawing on Aicher’s texts to the barriers that exist between design and art.

Interdisciplinary progress was also made between the three subject areas covered by the project. One Interior Design student was inspired by Aicher’s work to author an object that would more readily be classifiable as product design - a computer mouse with a brief to go easy on our tendons.

One particularly memorable item was a comic about a door handle that reduces bacterial transmission – an issue that has assumed great importance lately –by not being very pleasant to take hold of. From a philosophical perspective, too, there were calls to take a new slant on the world as a means of enhancing one’s life – or, as was argued in one student’s submission, of perceiving more than hitherto.

Aicher’s theories were even re-examined from a scientific angle. His essay “Grasping with hand and mind” served as a stimulus to extend his pictograms to the field of braille. Parallels were uncovered in this way between the dual processes of “grasping with hand and mind” – with reference to the visually impaired.

Possibly one of the most imposing handle studies yielded an oversized hand made of blue foam. The half-clenched fist could be gripped in the most diverse of ways and threw up a number of questions regarding the act of holding: How do we take hold of such an object, what psychological insights are gained as a result and what repercussions does this have for the way we use “handle-based objects” in our day-to-day lives?

It was precisely to such commonplace objects that we addressed ourselves at a series of meetings as well as in the final presentation. Everyone involved was asked to bring such items along and these were soon being discussed and compared with reference to the wide variety of materials incorporated, to sporting equipment handles/grip trainers and to the passing of time and how this impacts upon design and handles. It can be stated by way of conclusion that Otl Aicher’s legacy is still very much in step with the times and testifies to his abiding value, be it in architecture, interior design, product design, graphic design or, indeed, the educational and psychological spheres.

Spurred on by what was being loudly called for in commercial and political circles, the Senate of what was then Coburg Technical College decided in February 2005 to further expand and intensify the institution’s work in the spheres of Building and Design on its Coburg campus by installing a Design Faculty that ran courses of study for a total of 799 students (then with a postgraduate component) in Architecture, Civil Engineering, Interior Design and Integrated Product Design. What is now the Coburg University of Applied Sciences and Arts thus became the first and to date only higher education establishment to dispense with the organisational boundaries between the four courses of study referred to, which share a great deal of common ground.

The highly innovative model adopted by the Design Faculty now ensures that the “interdisciplinary expertise” initially advocated by former Vice-Chancellor Lindner for those graduating in Integrated Product Design will now be acquired as a matter of course by students in any of the four interrelated disciplines involved – in the cause of a university education that is holistic, interdisciplinary and practically relevant.