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The Ulm Model

The Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm (HfG)—the Ulm School of Design—had a short and troubled existence. However, despite the school’s brief lifespan due to internal schisms and a withdrawal of state funding, the recent exhibition The Ulm Model, held at London’s Raven Row art gallery, demonstrated that the Ulm School of Design revolutionized design practice and education. Established in 1953 during West Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) and ending in 1968 amid student protests, the HfG explored how design could shape the social. It was felt that rationally designed objects and their interrelation might help actualize a more rational and progressively ordered society. As a result, the HfG praxis embraced technology and industry and interdisciplinary study; sociology and semiotics were part of the curriculum, and so was a systematic and collective approach. Among its staff were former Bauhausler Max Bill, graphic designer Otl Aicher, and artist and designer Tomás Maldonado. Though the HfG ultimately failed in its radical aims, it produced some of the most iconic designs of the postwar period, notably Braun’s advanced domestic products and a definitive visual identity for Lufthansa. The Ulm Model featured drawings, models, and designs by staff and students from across the school’s five departments: architecture, product design, visual communication, information, and film. The latter specialized in documentary film, some of which were screened at Raven Row, giving a flavor of the times. The exhibition encompassed superb student exercises on paper in line, color, and form; models exploring biomorphic forms and modular systems; the school’s feted in-house journal ulm; and classics like the TC100 stackable catering set or system, which was recently brought back into production. There were of course the famous Braun products like the company’s SK4 Phonosuper, a combined radio and record player. Its essentialist aesthetic and Plexiglas lid, in particular, were an innovation in the early 1950s. Braun products of this era are frequently attributed to design guru Dieter Rams, but they were also often the work of Ulmer designers, as with the SK4. A room of the gallery was devoted to one of the few