Design is a powerful force that shapes culture and it is a professional activity that is beneficial for both community and business alike. This blog is for all those who are interested in exploring these wider manifestations of design as a critical human activity and would like to shape its application across all human cultural and economic activities.
I have been researching their connections with India for many years and this invitation gave me an opportunity to continue my research a bit deeper into the connections between the schools. Interesting new facts were revealed in these interviews and we will need to do more before we have a deeper understanding of the real influences and how these have shaped the foundation of design education in India. My paper was not carried in the Bauhaus 5 — Tropics issue released in June but on pages 76 to 79 they carried a brief interview with me about a set of questions that their editors had set for me to respond.
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These institutions based themselves in policy, design, curriculum and teaching methods problem based learning in design courses , on the experience of the HfG. This experience was brought to them through contacts with HfG faculty members, through Ulm alumni who came there to teach, and also through the publications of the HfG, especially the magazine Ulm.
Little is also known about the various connections between the HfG Ulm and NID and I used this occasion to try and correct these lacunae. Image: HfG Ulm Faculty from top left clockwise — 1. Hans Gugelot with architecture students at NID in , 3. Horst Rittel author of "wicked problems" and 4. Tomas Maldonado author of "Design, Nature, Revolution". Gajanan Upadhayay started the Furniture Design activity at NID and worked with Hans Gugelot during his brief visit in and finally Jayanti A Panchal who also worked with Hans Gugelot in on the tangential fan project at NID and later went to Gugelot office in as a product-engineering designer.
As we know Hans Gugelot passed away in some time after his return from India but not before he had set up the faculty training exposure programme for Kumar Vyas to undertake at Ulm over 11 months in Kirit Patel of CEPT University had apprenticed in Frei Otto's studio in the 80's and this interview too provided insights about the approach to design that was followed by one of the prominent guest faculty at HfG Ulm.
