Look Back Look Forward: The Bengaluru event

Look Back Look Forward: HfG Ulm and design education in India, a brief report on the one day event at the Taj West End in Bengaluru on 6th March 2010.

Prof M P Ranjan
The one day conference at Bengaluru will be remembered for a long time by the participants, all teachers and design professionals interested in design education coming from several leading design schools in India. So much passion was released in the 24 round table discussions, only a small fraction of which can be captured here in the links and resources that we have been able to collect and create. Two workshop sessions, each of two hours duration across the twelve round tables each with eight participants and some observers kept all of us deeply involved on the subject of design education for India. This meeting will have an impact on the shape of design education in India since tere is the promise of a follow up meeting later in the year and with the sharing of the Ulm Journal as a digital resource as part of the conference kit the schools in India have for the first time access to the rich reflections that the Ulm masters had assembled in the 21 issues that were published between 1955 and 1968 when the HfG Ulm was finally closed down.

Image01: Thumbnail images of the HfG Ulm Exhibit at Chitra Kala Parishath and the registration session at Taj West End on the next day.

Image02: Thumbnail images of the conference participants during breaks as well as at the round tables during the keynote sessions.

We now invite all the participants to join us in our analysis of the event and the proceedings for which we shall make available and share below the links to all the lectures and presentations made during the day as well as a host of other resources that can aid the proposed analysis of the discussions and events of the day. The first set of links are for the eight voice files arranged in the order in which the events happened at the conference. The opening session had Dr Evelyn Hust of the Goethe Institute, Bengaluru make her opening remarks with Prof M P Ranjan making remarks on behalf of Director NID who could not attend and then on to introduce the format of the conference, keynotes and workshop sessions, as planned. The morning session that followed had three events – the first keynote lecture by Marcela Quijano, Curator, HfG Ulm Archive, and the second keynote by Prof Sudha Nadkarni, Dean, Welingkar Institute of Management where he shared his experience as a full time student at HfG Ulm in the early 60’s. (for voice recordings see the links below). Marcela Quijano gave us an overview of the pedagogy of the Ulm masters and the historical setting in which the design education experiments were conducted at the HfG Ulm.

Image 03: Thumbnails of the Table Cards, each with one HfG Ulm Master as listed: 01: Max Bill, 02: Otl Aicher, 03: Inge Aicher-Scholl, 04: Tomas Maldonado, 05: Hans Gugelot, 06: Walter Zeischegg, 07: Herbert Ohl, 08: Gui Bonsiepe, 09: Herbert Lindinger, 10: Horst Rittel, 11: William S. Huff, 12: Konrad Wachsmann.

These two keynote presentations of the morning set the tone for Looking Back at the legacy of Ulmer Model in terms of their design pedagogy and this was followed by the first Workshop session – Look Back – that lasted two hours, at the end of which each of the twelve tables made brief presentations on their findings about the salient aspects of HfG Ulm pedagogy. Each table was named after one of twelve selected Ulm teachers in the order listed below:

Table 10 : Horst Rittel
Table 09 : Herbert Lindinger
Table 04 : Tomas Maldonado
Table 03 : Inge Aicher-Scholl
Table 02 : Otl Aicher
Table 05 : Hans Gugelot
Table 08 : Gui Bonsiepe
Table 11 : William S. Huff
Table 12 : Konrad Wachsmann
Table 07 : Herbert Ohl
Table 06 : Walter Zeischegg
Table 01 : Max Bill

Each table had a set of provocation cards that carried quotes from the Ulm masters while these cards were also shown on the large projection screen as an automated slide show. Each quotation raised one issue that would be critical for the Ulm pedagogy and these provided the point of departure for the table discussions that were carried on in real earnest by all the participants. Each table also had table think sheets on which the participants were asked to make their doodles and notes as the discussions and devbates progressed at each table. These “Table Think Sheets” were collected at the end of the session and these too are made available here at the link below.

List of 8 voice files and resources for download
01_Opening Session_MPR Hust.mov – 12 mb
02_Keynote_Marcelo Quijano.mov – 27 mb
03_Keynote_Sudha Nadkarni.mov – 35 mb
04_Intro to_Look Back WS.mov – 9 mb
05_Round Table_Look Back.mov – 47 mb
06_Keynote_Kumar Vyas.mov – 54 mb
07_Keynote_Wolfang Jonas.mov – 61 mb
08_Round Table_Look Fward.mov – 49 mb

Image 04: Navigation screens from the Look Back Look Forward conference resource interactive DVD. These nine screens are from the root level pdf file and each item or image on the pages takes one to the respective file or page. The Index page is level zero, while the other pages are numbered from 1 to 8.

The conference resource DVD is packed with design education resources from HfG Ulm as well as from NID, Ahmedabad. Page two provides links to the numbered Journals from the HfG Ulm from 1 to 21 issue of the Journal, all scanned and made available as digital pdf files thanks to the kind permission from Prof Gui Bonsiepe who edited these volumes at Ulm. These Journals were published from 1955 till the last issue in 1968 when the school closed down under dramatic circumstances. These were available in India only in the NID library and for the first time these are made available to Indian design educators and researchers to understand the Ulm school’s unique pedagogy since these hold a rich resource of reflections from the Ulm teachers. Volume 3 was missing from the set all these years and we now have a copy thanks to the Ulm Archive Curator, Marcela Qujano, who gave us a copy for the Library which is now made available here as a digital pdf file at the link below, and this completes the set.

Download the “Look Back Look Forward” conference resource interactive DVD here:
Look Back_Look Forward_DVD.zip – 968 mb
Ulm 3.pdf – 3.2 mb (This issue was not included in the DVD since it did not exist in the NID Library and a copy was given to us by Marcelq Quijano when she arrived in Bengaluru for the conferfence.)

Page zero, or the opening page, is the Index with hyper-links to the other eight pages. Page two contains links to selected documents from the NID history and includes the Eames India Report of 1958, The MOMA catalogue of 1957 of classic design from USA and Europe whose prototypes are in the NID archives, NID Documentation 1964-69, The Ahmedabad Declaration of 1979, Design & Environment (1982), select faculty papers (1991) and the Proceedings of the DETM Conference (2005) and so on. Page four contains 16 papers and presentation files that record the progress of the Design Concepts and Concerns Course at NID where design thinking and design theory have been introduced to NID students from 1988 till date, evolving over the years to give NID education its distinctive identity. Page three has reports prepared by NID for the setting up of three sector specific institutes for design education in India. Other pages contain all the artworks for the conference graphics and table resources as well as the photographs from the Ulm Archive exhibit when it opened at the NID Gallery.

The visual slide shows or text resources for the keynote presentation are available for download here below and these can be viewed along with the voice files of the proceedings located above.
Keynote 01: India_Look back_Marcela Quijano.pdf – 5 mb
Keynote 02: NID Banglore Keynote at Ulm conference_Nadkarni.pdf – 36 mb

Keynote 03: Learning at NID- Then and Now, H Kumar Vyas (final).pdf – 1 mb
Keynote 04: Wolfgang Jonas_Ulm Conference_Keynote.pdf – 14 mb

Pictures of Bangalore event – Folders in .zip format each containing many selected pictiures in jpg format are available here for download (see list below)
Picture sets of Bangalore event in jpeg format
01_Ulm_Blore_PreConference.zip – 98 mb
02_Ulm_Blore_LookBack.zip – 79 mb
03_Ulm_LookForward01.zip – 75 mb
04_Ulm_Look Forward02 2.zip – 74 mb
05_Ulm_PostConference.zip – 11 mb

Picture albums of the sets in pdf format can be downloaded from these links here:
01_Ulm_Blore_PreConference.pdf – 9 mb
02_Ulm_Blore_LookBack_h3.pdf – 6 mb
03_Ulm_LookForward01_h3.pdf – 6 mb
04_Ulm_Look Forward02_h3.pdf – 7 mb
05_Ulm_PostConference_h3.pdf – 2 mb
Chakradar mid Blore Pics_h2.pdf – 6 mb

Conference kit resources in pdf format.
While the conference resource DVD that was distributed to all the participants contains the digital art works version of the table materials we provide separate links here for some of these resources so that they may be used directly if needed.

01_Conference Table_Ulm Masters.pdf : 58.9 mb
02a_look back cards_prn.pdf : 3.2 mb
02b_look forward cards_prn.pdf : 2.4 mb
02c_Model card Front_oranisation vs. free + political structure.pdf_4.pdf : 5 mb
05_Ulm Biography Bookmarks.pdf : 1.9 mb
06_keynote speaker bio+Workshops_s.pdf : 20.5 mb

Other HfG Ulm Conference Resources
Conference Participant List_xx.pdf – 3 mb
Table_Think Sheets_175page.pdf – 11 mb

Participants will now have access to all the resources that they may use to make their own analysis of the one day event at Bengaluru and from these we do hope that Indian design teachers will take back a lesson from the Ulm masters, that of documentation of their teaching resources and of their class outcomes in a contemporaneous manner in the days ahead. This alone will ensure that Indian design education retains a quality benchmark that can be shared and discussed as we refine our teaching methods and find value that is unique to our context, environment and culture. If teachers from our Indian design schools start publishing their work and through this an active dialogue is set in place we would have succeeded in our mission of sensitizing our teachers to the need for such documentation in managing and manintaining a high quality of education in our schools across India. I hope that we did succeed and that the future will show us the positive results of these tall intentions.

Prof M P Ranjan

LOOK Back – LOOK Forward: HfG Ulm and Design Education in India

Prof M P Ranjan

Image01: Conference Logo using a basic design assignment as an image for the conference - Design: Rupesh Vyas

Conference Title:

LOOK Back – LOOK Forward: HfG Ulm and Design Education in India

Venue & Schedule:
Hotel Taj West End, Race Cource Road, Bangalore 560 001, India
March 6, 2010 : Full-day Conference-cum-Workshop on Design Education: 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m.

Last date for registration: February 26, 2010

Organisers:
National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad and Bangalore
in collaboration with
Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan (GI/MMB) Bangalore,
HfG-Archive Ulm & IfA (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, Germany) Stuttgart

Background:
The HfG Ulm, which started as a continuation of the Bauhaus experiments in design education under one of its former students – Max Bill, soon veered from a foundation in art to a science and society focus under the leadership of Tomas Maldonado. The HfG Ulm faculty, all eminent teachers and thought leaders in their field, experimented with design education like never before and documented the results of teaching in a series of 21 journals published between 1958 and 1968. These ten years of intense research and theory building and sharing has had a lasting impact on the world of design education and the availability of these journals being one of the major factors for this durable influence. Selected papers from these volumes located in the NID Library were reproduced for a conference on design education in 1989 by Prof Kirti Trivedi at Industrial Design Centre, IIT, Powai and these have been a further source of inspiration for Indian design teachers over the years.

The school impacted the world of design through its direct professional action with industry, memorably with Braun and its successful range of products that hit the market in 1955 and continued with other product successes that can be called the Ulm style of meticulous detailing and clean functional form. Hans Gugelot was among the lead drivers along this track. Other teachers such as Otl Aicher influenced major corporations such as Herman Miller and Lufthansa with significant contributions in graphic design.

The closing down of the HfG Ulm in 1968 saw the scattering of its faculty and students across the world, each steeped in the Ulm ideology of public good with design theory and action, resulting in significant action on the ground in the form of new design education in Latin America by Gui Bonsiepe, in India by Sudhakar Nadkarni and H Kumar Vyas and in Japan by Kohei Suguira, besides the numerous other influences in Europe and the USA that continue to this day.

The Ulmer Museum/HfG-Archiv has brought together the various threads of the Ulm school in a unique exhibition called ulm: method and design/ulm: school of design 1953-1968 with archival objects, classroom assignments and multimedia exhibits never before seen in India. The exhibition is presented in India by the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, in collaboration with IfA (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, Germany) Stuttgart and offers the opportunity to both “LOOK Back - LOOK Forward: HfG Ulm and Design Education in India”, a title that aptly sums up the objective behind the intensive one-day conference/workshop on March 6, 2010 at Hotel Taj West End in Bangalore, India, as well as to draw inspiration from the path-breaking work at Ulm and reflect on the path forward here in India. An impressive catalogue published by Hatje Cantz (ISBN 3-7757-9142-6) provides rich background research content on the school and the exhibition.

Participants:
Design teachers and teachers from other institutes interested in design pedagogy, including design research, design management and technology & design professionals interested in design education. Limited places available for design student observers sponsored by each participating school.

Registration Fee:
Individual designers and faculty : Rs. 2000/=
Team of 5 faculty per school from India : Rs 5000/=
Design student observer : Rs. 500/= (limited seats)
International Participant : USD 100 or Rs. 5000/=

Exhibition Venue: Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore - opens March 5, 2010
Conference Venue: Hotel Taj West End, Bangalore – March 6, 2010

Organising Institutions
Goethe-Institut/ Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore
Dr. Evelin Hust, Director
National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad & Bangalore
Prof. Pradyumna Vyas, Director

Keynote Speakers:
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Jonas, Professor for "system design" at the School of Art and Design, University of Kassel, Germany
Ms. Marcela Quijano, Curator, HfG-Archiv Ulm, Germany
Prof Sudhakar Nadkarni, Dean, Business Design, Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research, Mumbai
Prof H Kumar Vyas, Distinguished Professor, CEPT University, Ahmedabad

Conference Chair:
Prof M P Ranjan, NID, Ahmedabad
Co-Chair:
Prof Suchitra Sheth, CEPT University, Ahmedabad

Registration:
Registration fees are payable by Cash or Demand Draft drawn in favour of “National Institute of Design” payable at Bangalore.
Payment with Registration Form duly filled to be delivered to NID R & D Campus, Bangalore or at the Goethe- Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore.

Last date for registration without late fees: February 26, 2010
Late fee payable after closing date: additional 50 % of registration fees above.
(Limited participation so please register early)

Address for communication and registration:

1st contact: National Institute of Design, Bangalore

Shashikala Satyamoorthy,
Conference Coordinator
National Institute of Design, R & D Campus,
#12 HMT Link Road, Off Tumkur Road
Bangalore 560 022
Tel: +91-080-23478939 (D) / 23373006
Fax: +91 80 23373086
conference email: hfgulm2010@nid.edu
www.nid.edu

2nd contact: Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore

Maureen Gonsalves
Programme Coordinator
Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan
716 CMH Road, Indiranagar 1st Stage
Bangalore 560 038
Ph: +91 80 2520 5305/06/07/08-203
Fax: +91 80 2520 5309
arts@bangalore.goethe.org
www.goethe.de/bangalore


see detailed programme and download Registration Form from this link here below:
Download Detailed Conference Programme and Registration Form in pdf 400kb

Prof M P Ranjan

Criss + Cross: Swiss Design returns to India

…Design for India…

Image: Criss + Cross: Swiss Design on show at the NID Design Gallery in Ahmedabad. The exhibit opened on Tuesday, 5 August 2008 and stayed on show for public from 6 - 14, August 2008

The Criss + Cross exhibit is traveling in India after having journeyed through a number of other countries since it was first put together in 2003. Criss + Cross has been curated by Ariana Pradal, Köbi Gantenbein & Roland Eberle. The exhibitions in India are part of the jubilee celebrations commemorating 60 years of Indo-Swiss friendship and put together by Pro Helvetia worldwide, the Swiss Arts Council, dedicated to promoting cultural works of nationwide and international interest. Three hundred of the finest Swiss designs assembled by the curatorial team are on display in six “Magic Boxes” under seven themes as follows:
1. small + beautiful: meticulous Swiss precision and things that just work
2. the tiny helpers: ubiquitous products for everyday use but with a difference, the Swiss way.
3. up to the mountains: natural wisdom from the Swiss terrain and the mountains,
4. the longsellers: all time classics
5. hip + young: youthful expression and products for the young at heart.
6. a visual statement: a slide show that presents about 300 recent works of graphic designers from various fields.
7. library: beautifully designed and printed books
The exhibition opens in Bangalore in partnership with the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology & Goethe-Institut Bangalore. 
The venue: the Goethe-Institut Bangalore, Max Mueller Bhavan
: opening on Friday, 5 September 2008 at 6:30 pm 
Exhibition will be on view from 6 - 20 September 2008, each day from
10:30 am - 6:30 pm (Mon - Sat)
and 10:30 am - 5:00 pm (Sun). Those designers and design students who missed the exhibit at NID, Ahmedabad are strongly advised to catch the earliest flight to Bangalore and make it for the show. If you are already in Bangalore you have no further excuse to miss this very special Swiss treat, all packed in six crates.

Image: Criss + Cross: Swiss Design exhibition was packaged in six cases and organized in seven sections, each in wooden crates with integrated lighting and the seventh, a slide show projection system, The exhibit on the right is the “Library” of fabulous Swiss Graphic design books and on the left is the exhibit called “Small & beautiful” with several of the finest examples of Swiss fine craftsmanship from medical devices, watches to computer accessories.

My personal favorite here in this section is the Kern Compass Set, which reminded me of the much bigger and elaborate professional set that was given to me for personal use when I first joined NID as a young design student in April 1969 and this did help whip up my passion for fine geometry diagrams by using some of the finest drawing instrument in the world! NID knew quality in those days and respected it to ensure that every student used the best of class in the world of drawing devices in their classes and that for me is represented by the Kern drawing instruments that was standard supply for all students joining NID in those days. Circles drawn with the Kern set did not leave gaping holes in the drawing sheets since the compass point is of hardened metal and the tip is adjustable to remain perpendicular and most of all the joints just worked and did not shake or slip due to the fine precision that came from the Swiss workmanship and their understanding of quality and design at the functional as well as the aesthetic level. There were no compromises in their product.

The other remarkable exhibits in this section are the Swiss Passport which can make every citizen proud to hold one that is so distinctive and secure while the other is a commemorative edition of the Swatch which is one of four special designs offered for the 700 th anniversary of Switzerland in 1991. Each exhibit has a story to tell and the Criss + Cross catalogue is a useful resource that can add value to the exhibit, I have one in hand, special thanks are due to the Swiss Embassy in Mumbai which kindly spared a copy for me to review.

Image: Dimple Soni, an NIID faculty and coordinator of Exhibition Design studying the exhibit detailing at the “Little Helpers” container. A finely detailed box, hinged and mounted on roller castors can be opened and mounted in a jiffy, with all the signage, lighting and exhibits in place, all in one simple case, unpretentious and elegant, just great design detailing and treatment. At the top are a row of peepholes that invite the viewer to participate, each shows one colour slide of an object and the solution is a simple 35mm slide picture viewer mounted behind the peephole that uses the glow of the lights in the box to show the slide in sharp view, a simple plastic viewer that gives us great pleasure, that many electronic gadgets would not be able to.

The objects in this section are consumer and domestic products from everyday life, each designed to get the job done with minimum fuss and the objects all but become invisible to the user since they just work and the title “Little Helpers” is an appropriate label for this category of ubiquitous products of our day, all well designed. My personal favorite here is the Omega drawing pins with three legs instead of one central pin, each made by punching thin sheet metal into an embossed and therefore sturdy pin, comfortable for the thumb that could hold drawing sheets to the wooden drawing boards that we all used as students at NID in the heady days of the late 60’s of design learning under the Swiss influence that came through our Graphic Design department. In those days all our graphic design teachers had traveled to the Mecca of Graphic Design in Switzerland, the Basel School, to be tutored by none other than Armin Hofmann and his colleagues to come back and introduce the International Style in India with over 500 or more corporate logos, all designed by the Institute under this strong and durable Swiss influence over the early years of NID and its practice of design in India which I have mentioned in an earlier post on the subject..

Image: Detail of two of the six cases that make up the Swiss Design exhibit. On the left is the “Up to the mountains” crate showing designs produced by the traditional wisdom of a mountain dwelling people rooted in the reality of the land. On the right is the “hip + young” crate with designs for the youthful and playful generation.

Each nation around the world can boast of indigenous design solutions in their food, homes, objects as well as votive occasions and festivals, all designed through local action over the years by ordinary human actions. We too will need to look at what India has to offer as an enormous resource with our huge regional variations and long history of settled civilization. Design at this level is a product of culture and it goes to a very deep level in each refined manifestation, which may take many centuries to mature. The Swiss have learned their lessons from their mountains and these exhibits represent this deep respect for the mountain, particularly one as imposing as the Great Matterhorn, a challenge for climbers of all ages. My favorite in this section is the Avalanche dog, the Grand Saint-Bernard, a Swiss contribution to the world of specially bred and designed nature shown as a small ceramic model since the real one could not be shown. Design with nature is just as Claude Levi Straus tells us that the Mayan civilization created many of our vegetables, which were all “designed” by their careful breeding and imaginative nurture of nature in the past. In the youthful category my favorite is the Classic Micro Skate Scooter now used by adults and children alike to get around town but for me it brought back memories of my own childhood scooter from my fathers factory in Guindy, Madras when I had my very own scooter to zip around the toy factory and the vast grounds that led up to the Mount Road entrance. I will save this from another post that will link up to the Rockytoys story from my childhood days.

Image: “The Longsellers” or Swiss all time classics with many exciting and famous offerings as seen from the pages of the Criss + Cross catalogue.

Seen here are the famous Vitra design miniature pieces, each a precise scaled down model of a design classic produced by this remarkable design led company which also makes the original items in true and faithful detail, as specified by their designers. Max Bill’s Ulmer Stull is seen hanging at the top of the box and below it is the classic Univers font that was designed by Adrian Frutiiger another one of the NID’s great visiting teachers in the roaring 60’s. He was also responsible for the design of the famous NID symbol that is now standing at the main entrance gate as a cast in concrete negative form, which is back-lit at night to be seen from the road. Further on the shelf, is the triangular Swiss delicacy called Toblerone, my favorite chocolate, which is visible from both sides through the cut-out section in the display box. Clockwise, the thumbnail images below show – the section separator in the book, the Univers font by Adrian Frutiger in 1954, the famous Victorinox – Swiss Army Knife revised as ALOX in 1980, The Landi Stuhl by Hans Coray designed in 1938, the Le Corbusier LC1 Armchair from 1928, the Station Clock by Hans Hilfiker in 1955, the Garden Chair by Willy Guhl in 1954, Ulmer Stool by Max Bill in 1954, and Verner Panton chairs by Vitra from 1958 and 1960.

For me personally many these items of furniture along with the ones that we saw frequently featured in Danish and Italian magazines in the NID library formed the impassioned introduction to design as a young student at NID in the late 60’s and early 70’s when these very designers inspired me with their work and their imagination as well as deep understanding of material and form that is represented by their classic design offerings which we now see in the Swiss design exhibit now in India for the first time. The Ulmer Stuhl is for me a very special exhibit since this was one of the remarkable products that was available as a reproduction at NID along with the box-wood filing cabinet that was used by Prof Kumar Vyas and Prof Sudha Nadkarni, both having returned from Ulm exposure in the early 60’s. I was given the filing cabinet to redesign in metal wire as my very first design assignment at NID by Rolf Misol, my German furniture design faculty when I joined NID in April 1969, but that is a story for another day.

…Design for India…