Hochschule Für Gestaltung

an educational and research institute in Ulm, Federal Republic of Germany, concerned with theoretical and practical problems of design. The school was founded in 1951 by the Swiss architect, sculptor, painter, and draftsman M. Bill, who between 1953 and 1955 built a special building for the school and who served as the school’s rector until 1956. The school, which strove to revive the architectural and design traditions of the Bauhaus, existed until 1968, when a conflict with the reactionary government of the Land of Baden-Württemberg caused it to close. At the school, leading West German designers worked together with important specialists from abroad, for example, W. Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and T. Maldonado, who was rector of the school from 1964 to 1966. The school developed an anticommercial concept of design that focused attention on the social and humanist aspects of the subject medium; it exerted a profound influence on the work of prominent designers of the 1960’s and 1970’s.