The Ulm School of Design Discourse: A Foundation for Sustainable Design

Abstract

This article discusses the relevance of the HfG Ulm discourse to the notions of Sustainable Design. The Ulmer programme included values such as social equity, resource optimisation and respect for the planet and the environment, which are main pillars for Sustainable Design practices. Links between the HfG’s ideas of the ’60s and contemporary sustainable design values could be examined by comparing historical and recent discourses. The text presents topics that the compared discussions share such as environmental concern, social sustainability (social needs, distribution), systems perspective, resilience, diversity, planned obsolescence, behaviour and culture, and the perspective of design as a constructive activity. The HfG experience could be used today, given a proper translation from historical approaches applied to the state of current affairs. The comprehension of the Ulmer discourse can contribute to building the future design knowledge, possibly creating frameworks that will allow better sustainability practices.

Keywords:

• Sustainable design
• HfG Ulm
• Ulm School of Design
• Ulm Model
• sustainability

Acknowledgements

I thank Marcela Quijano for her contributions which helped shape this text. Together with Dagmar Rinker’s, her work at the HfG-Archive Ulm has been a great inspiration and knowledge source. This article was based on my Master’s thesis ‘Sustainable Design and the relevance of the Ulm School of Design today’ (diCom, University of Buenos Aires, 2016, Supervisor Guillermo Bengoa).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Quoting Fernando Flores ‘We don’t realize how much we create reality through language. If we say that life is hard, it will be hard’.

2 Bonsiepe relates this correspondence design-language with Winograd and Flores’ work. Winograd, Terry, and Fernando Flores. Understanding computers and cognition: a new foundation for design. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1986.

3 Introduction to Changing the Change, Torino, 2008.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carolina Short

Carolina Short is a Design Lecturer at the University of Waikato. Previously, she held academic positions at the University of Otago (New Zealand), the Burg-Giebichenstein School of Art and Design (Germany) and the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina). Switching between industry and Academia, she has delivered courses, seminars, talks and published articles, conference papers, and book chapters on different design media. She founded (bi)gital» in 1996 and since then works for companies and institutions in Latin America, Europe, and New Zealand as designer and consultant. With (bi)gital» she has been collaborating with HfG Archive Ulm, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Buenos Aires Book Fair, Akademie Schloß Solitude, tipoGráfica magazine, among others. Carolina has a Graphic Design degree and a Master’s in Communication Design Theory from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), Argentina.