Hans Roericht

The famous TC100 stacking dishes from Hans (Nick) Roericht.

Hans Albrecht 'Nick' Roericht (born November 15, 1932 in Schönkirch ) is a German designer. From 1973 to 2002 he was professor at the Berlin University of the Arts , Industrial Design IV, and had a lasting influence on several generations of designers. Many of his former students now teach themselves, 18 of them as professors at home and abroad.

Life

Roericht completed his studies from 1955 to 1959 at the Ulm School of Design , where he began to work systematically and documentary for the first time in the third year of his studies. As a final thesis he designed the system tableware TC 100. From 1960 research assistant at the HfG Ulm, first with Georg Leowald , from 1961 with Otl Aicher . 1966 to 1967 lecturer in the USA at Ohio State University. From 1968 Roericht, under the general planning of Otl Aicher, was entrusted with the exterior furnishing of the grounds of the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. This included the seats in the stadium as well as the work and living room furniture in the accommodations, lounges and administration rooms of the Olympic Village, which were designed according to a variable modular system.

In this first large practical project, Roericht implemented what from then on determined his teaching: To achieve a better quality of life in the human-object network and not only to involve changing production, living and working conditions, but to make them useful. In doing so, he has repeatedly checked, brought up and changed his methods, not only in order to adapt the teaching to social conditions, but also to give the students a tool with which they can initiate this change themselves.

Teaching at the Berlin University of the Arts from 1973 to 2002

In 1973 Nick Roericht took over the professorship for Industrial Design IV at the Berlin University of the Arts . The politicization of the students had a very strong influence on teaching at that time. The dialectical-materialistic theories that everything you do is linked to a societal and social relevance went well with his Ulm functional theory approach. Many project topics dealt with the relief in the working world, work flow design and improvement.

From 1980 the social issue moved into the background. The individual demands on a product became more important. Gisela Kasten, psychologist and lecturer from 1973 to 2002, describes this upheaval as follows: "The consumer and object world had developed further. Things should no longer be as durable, sensible, useful and aesthetic as possible, but also very individual and Very personal. Consumption items suddenly took part in social life. This participation was aggressively the focus in the 1980s. This of course also told the expressiveness of things and their entire symbolic impact. It was not about serial ability at all. Therefore, everyone became The student draft was issued immediately. And the question of whether someone wanted to produce it or whether 100 people wanted it straight away came much, much later ". At the same time, the start of the "New Berlin Design", which is well received by the public through the semester project "KDO (Kaufhaus des Ostens)", supervised by Andreas Brandolini , Joachim Stanitzek and Jasper Morrison . During this time, design was very important. In Milan, for example, the Italian furniture design group Memphis-Design was founded, led by Ettore Sottsass, which existed until 1988.

With the development of the eighties, Roericht made radical changes in the designer's job. Design now took place for the first time without the industrial client. For teaching, this means a development from object to subject study, from object to user. The period of on-site design and participatory design began, which stated that there was no other way than to involve the later users in product development.

Roericht formulated the "3-sentence conception-simulation-strategy" for the designer training, which claims that change as a conscious process is possible and necessary and should provide tools for the future. Concept stands for a process of teamwork and pattern formation, simulation for abstract, nimble execution, strategy stands for the means and ways of realization and enforcement, taking into account the interaction with people / structures / relationships during realization. With the advent of new information technologies, recording work results as well as documenting became increasingly important.

In the winter semester 88/89 the ID4 introduced a pilot project "Integrative Studies" for third and fourth semester students in order to deal with all subjects relevant for design education in 14 exercises and short-term projects. From now on, knowledge and doing should be conveyed simultaneously. The aim of the series of exercises was a parallel design, organization and strategy training. Experts from practice were invited as lecturers and for short, intensive exercises in order to enable students to experience the different career and survival strategies using real examples. In the nineties, the realization continued that new design action can well grow out of changing economic conditions. In projects, "what-if techniques" and changed forms of production and use were conceived and played out. Roericht developed his teaching methods in the direction of a self-sufficient designer who is designer, implementer and distributor at the same time.

The last phase of his apprenticeship then finally led the students away from the classic ideas of industrial design or a preliminary work for the industry (so-called model course part 2, flying students / transiteurs). In their new role, designers should use the means, instruments and strategies of design to explore completely different problem and work areas. Roericht now describes design as a method to shape the transition from the physical to the increasingly immaterial world in the newly emerging information society, not only as a consequence of material finiteness, but also for the development of new models of life. "Their attractiveness as general problem solvers and actors, their well-trained head and hand connections, their extensive curiosity, their pragmatism make the designers not only good survivors, good pre-executors, but also good evolutionary pioneers, vision engineering, that's what we call it. " In this phase, the specialists were no longer brought into teaching, but the students were sent to design offices (e27 and Vogt and Weizenegger ) as so-called flyings students and transitors , in order to take on practical responsibility for project acquisition and organization there at an early stage.

Product development Roericht

The Roericht product development office had existed in Ulm since 1967, taking on both classic design tasks and later mainly feasibility studies. Customers were Lufthansa (on-board crockery in 1971), Loewe, NCR, Rodenstock. Intensive collaboration with Wilkhahn, for which several chair programs (conference armchair "190", waiting seat "840", standing seat "Stitz") and a series of studies were created that dealt with topics such as "New conference concepts" or "The future of sitting". The crockery TC 100, which Roericht designed as a diploma thesis in Ulm in 1959, was produced by Rosenthal until 2008. After buying back the rights, the tableware was relaunched in 2010 in cooperation with Verbeelen.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Designed for his diploma thesis at the Ulm School of Design in 1959, included in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art New York, see www.moma.org/
2. ↑ teaching hdk berlin. Retrieved July 24, 2017 . 
3. ↑ roericht.de
4. ↑ roericht.de
5. ↑ roericht.de

Web links

• roericht.net
• tc100.de
• Image from TC 100
• Sitio en español with information sobre HANS ROERICHT