Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach
The Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) Offenbach is the Hessen State University of Art and Design since 1970. Its tradition stretches back to the year 1832. Taking its lead from the educational and research models adopted by the Bauhaus and Hochschule für Gestaltung, the University of Design at Ulm, the teaching at HfG Offenbach is future-oriented and largely based on individual supervision and mentorship. Fine Art, Media and Design are taught using a modular structure, culminating in a Diplom, a degree.
The course contents of the school of design prepare students for the far-reaching changes in the professional field. In addition to the experimental creative activity of the designer personality, product designers must also increasingly act as process-oriented, networked experts for product development and product communication. With the theoretical competence of the school – which developed the theory of product language in the 1980s as the first design theory based on scientific theory – the communicative dimension of design is further developed. New technologies, processes and procedures (such as nanotechnology or bionics) require creative intelligence and a new product language in order to make them clear and understandable for users.
The range of courses mediate the necessary complex artistic, theoretical, technological and creative skills of the professional field and offer students perspectives for dealing with future fields of activity (integrative design, strategic design, visualization and materialization), in particular the requirements in technological-experimental fields.
Research and Teaching
Since April 2010, the HfG Offenbach has been offering a doctorate (Dr. phil.). Research and teaching focus on the interactions between theory and practice of design, the interdependencies between experiment and work, as well as new and old imaging and shaping techniques. The promotion of communicative intelligence, the ability to design independently and the development of aesthetic-intellectual maturity are essential educational contents.
The aim of the HfG is to train artists and designers who are up to the demands of a constantly changing landscape of fields of activity. For them, it is not just a matter of being reactive, but of shaping and characterizing developments in culture and society.
In addition to international networking and exchange programs, a special feature of the studies is the high theoretical content in both departments.
