Offenbach am Main College of Design

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Offenbach am Main College of Design
founding 1832
place Offenbach am Main
state Hesse
country Germany
president Bernd Kracke
Students approx. 750
Employee 147
including professors 24
Website www.hfg-offenbach.de

The Hochschule für Gestaltung is an art college of the State of Hesse in Offenbach am Main . The university has around 750 students and 147 employees, including 24 professors and 56 teaching staff and research assistants.

Education

Entrance on Schloßstraße
Exhibition in the building during a tour
First semester presentation 2009, tour 1st floor
View from the west wing of the main building
Palace Square with Ludo Mayer Fountain (by Heinrich Jobst ) and the main building with the west wing built in 2003. Visible is the stump of the 2nd staircase without the onion dome
Isenburg Castle used by the HfG

For the completion of the ten-semester degree in designer, there are two departments to choose from: Art with the subjects of communication design, media, stage and costume design and design .

In addition, the university offers a two-semester postgraduate course.

Since the summer semester 2010 there has been the possibility at the HfG Offenbach for a model that combines science with art or design to become a Dr. phil. to do a PhD. There are specializations in art and media studies or design studies.

history

Today's Offenbach am Main University of Design was founded in 1832 by geometer Georg Fink as a crafts school. In 1877 it merged with the School for Art and Industry to form the technical teaching institutions in Offenbach am Main (English: Offenbach Institute of Technical Education ) with the areas of mechanical engineering, construction and applied arts . The Cyclopædia of Education , published in 1883, counted the school among the most important educational institutions in its field in Europe. In 1885 they moved into the new building on Mathildenplatz, which soon turned out to be too small (it is used by the police today).

Heyday as the "Offenbach School"

From 1908 Dominikus Böhm taught at the HfG, who built his first church in Offenbach in 1919 (as the first “modern” church at all). A donation from the factory owner Ludo Mayer enabled a new building for the school and the move to the current building in 1910, which was designed by the director Hugo Eberhardt . It was opened on January 24, 1913 in the presence of Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig .

The German Leather Museum emerged from the teaching material collection in 1917 . From 1879 to 1920 Karl Brockmann worked at the school, who introduced the focus on designing patterns for industry ("pattern draftsman"), which today corresponds roughly to product design. The aim was “material treatment appropriate to the factory”. Ernst Engel , a graphic artist at the school, initiated the collaboration between Eberhardt and the designer and type designer Rudolf Koch in the 1930s . In 1925 the textile designers Isolde Czóbel and Maria Steudel were appointed to the school as the first professors.

In the Great Depression, the country's resources were exhausted, and the concept of the unity of industry and art (the preliminary form of design) could not assert itself against politics. The school first had to hand over the areas of interior design, sculpture and decorative painting to Mainz. After Rudolf Koch's death in 1934, the profile that Hugo Eberhardt had given the institution was lost, and when the Offenbach School was synonymous worldwide with an academic approach that was appropriate to the material.

Decline due to the handing over of departments during the National Socialist and post-war period

The National Socialists ordered the mechanical engineering department to be handed over to the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences and renamed the school the Master School of German Crafts , so it was in fact degraded to a vocational school and shared the fate of the Städelschule . After 1945 the school was called Werkkunstschule Offenbach am Main . The removal of academic departments that had begun under the National Socialists was continued. Now it hit the architecture department, which had made a name for itself internationally with the training of church builders. At the HfG, architects were not qualified as Dipl.-Ing. Graduated , but as at other art schools in Germany as a qualified architect . At that time the professional title of architect was not protected in Germany. After chambers of architects were set up all over Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they managed to tie the professional title of architect to membership in a chamber of architects, and consequently the traditional academic degree could no longer be awarded. After various deadlines, the department finally went to the TU Darmstadt and closed at the HfG on September 30, 1983.

Reconstitution as a university after 1970

In 1970 it was converted into an art college in the state of Hesse , and at the same time it was the first to carry the title of "Hochschule für Gestaltung" (previously used by the Bauhaus ) after the renowned Ulm School of Design was closed and used a large part of its teaching concept. The success has led to the fact that meanwhile the term "HfG" has almost established itself as a generic term, and other schools have called themselves HfG. In 1986 Kurt Steinel (Rector of the HfG from 1974 to 1994) succeeded in re-establishing professorial positions in the fields of sculpture and painting, after the state cut back on these from 1934. The Swiss Vincenzo Baviera became the first professor of sculpture .

In the product design department, the “theory of product language”, the so-called “Offenbach approach”, was developed in the 1970s. This enables the evaluation and design of products according to formal, symbolic and semantic criteria. In 2006, the Institute for Technology-Oriented Design Innovation (today Design Institute of Technology) was founded at the HfG.

Location and building

The university is located in the Rhine-Main area , which has a high level of design clusters, including in automotive design. The campus is in the immediate vicinity of the Main , and a few meters from the university is the Klingspor Museum for Typography and Book Art in the south wing of the Büsing-Palais on Herrnstraße .

The university campus comprises three buildings that are grouped around Schlossplatz:

  • Isenburg Castle, built in 1576
  • The main building designed by Hugo Eberhardt in 1909–1913
  • The west wing, newly built in 2003, designed by Reuter + Werr

Today's main building, built by Hugo Eberhardt in 1909–1913 as a new building for the technical college in historicizing architectural form, is located on Schlossplatz across from Isenburg Castle. It was built as a two-winged, courtyard-like complex with an archway over Schloßstraße. Different railings, capitals, etc. in the building should serve as a model for the architecture students (they have been preserved to this day). The building was badly damaged in World War II. After 1945 a reconstruction followed, amid violent protests by traditionalists who wanted to demolish the building in order to restore the view from the city to the castle. The completely destroyed roof region - originally a steep hipped roof divided by dormers and tower domes - was replaced by a flat storey. As a result, an additional, fully usable floor was created, but the original architectural overall effect of the building and Eberhardt's design language were severely impaired. As a result, the original architectural dialogue with the neighboring Isenburg Palace can only be partially experienced today. During the reconstruction, new standard windows were installed and all oval windows except for one (otherwise the room would not have any) bricked up. This intervention was reversed with the renovation in 2003, when windows with a central window cross were installed again as part of a facade renovation.

Location Geleitsstrasse 103

Since the beginning of the summer semester 2011, the HfG has also been using a building on Geleitsstrasse 103. There are:

  • the field of art (sculpture, experimental spatial concepts, painting and performance in the extended field),
  • the professorship of graphic design and illustration,
  • the art laboratory,
  • the basic teaching of the art department.

New building project

In 2019, the state of Hesse acquired a plot of around 15,000 m² in the new development area at Offenbacher Hafen. A completely new HfG building is to be completed here by 2024/2025. The state of Hesse is making around € 100 million available for this under the so-called HEUREKA II program.

Library

The university has an extensive library on design, art and architecture. The library and media library are open to the public and can also be researched online, but the magazine with historical books is not.

See also

literature

  • Axel Blohm, Herbert Heckmann , Wolfgang Sprang: From craft to art. The history of the Offenbach am Main University of Design. Hochschule für Gestaltung, Offenbach 1984, ISBN 3-921997-12-7
  • Bernd Kracke (Ed.): "Gestalte - create - Design, Medien, Kunst". 175 years Hfg Offenbach. 1832, 1970, 2007. av edition, Ludwigsburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-89986-092-4
  • Andreas Hansert : Offenbach am Main. Culture in the wake of National Socialism. Applied Arts School, German Leather Museum, Klingspor font foundry. Böhlau Verlag , Vienna 2019, ISBN 978-3-2052089-6-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. referred to as "art-industry school in Offenbach" in: Henry Kiddle, Alexander J. Schem (ed.): The cyclopædia of education. A dictionary of information for the use of teachers, school officers, parents, and others. E. Steiger & Co. u. a., New York NY u. a. 1883, p. 812, via Google Books.
  2. Alexander Koch: Architecture and Housing. 1933, ISSN  0003-8792 .

Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 27 ″  N , 8 ° 45 ′ 53 ″  E