VIDEO
The Ulm School of Design
Dr. Martin Mäntele, director of the HfG-Archive, discusses the Ulm School of Design exhibition at RMIT Gallery.
VISUAL: Ulm School of Design at RMIT Gallery. 1 August – 30 August 2014. An exhibition by ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen), German institute for international cultural relations. RMIT University logo.
VISUAL: Video of the top corner of a large black and white photograph part of the exhibition on display in the RMIT Gallery and the title of the photograph reads: Ulm 1948.
Dr Martin Mäntele: In 1948, Ulm, like the rest of Germany, was ...
VISUAL: Close up of a black and white photograph on display in the RMIT Gallery of the town of Ulm. Houses, buildings, and the Ulm Cathedral (Ulmer Munster) are all damaged from the bombing during the war, they are missing all or parts of roofs, walls etc.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... still in ruins and, of course, had to be rebuilt.
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele standing in front of the same black and white photograph of Ulm 1948 speaking to camera.
Dr Martin Mäntele: And the industry which was now really ...
VISUAL: Close up of base of the Ulm Stool which is on display. In the background is a section of a black and white photograph of one male and three female students sitting together.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... mass producing things was waiting for designers ...
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele standing in front of the same black and white photograph of Ulm 1948 speaking to camera.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... and they needed designers and, of course, one wanted to have good quality products ...
VISUAL: Close up of white stackable tableware (plates and tea cups) on display.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... so the concept of the Ulm School of Design ...
VISUAL: Close up of a white car on display.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... just came at the right time.
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele sitting on an Ulm Stool in front of the same black and white photograph of Ulm 1948 speaking to camera. RMIT logo title appears at lower part of screen and reads: Dr Martin Mäntele Director of the HfG?Archive.
Dr Martin Mäntele: The school itself only existed for 16 years between 1953 and '68 but the building still exists and houses the archive ...
VISUAL: Black and white photograph of the exterior of the buildings of the Ulm School of Design which is on display.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... of the former Ulm School of Design. The model was ...
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele standing in the RMIT Gallery speaking to camera.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... defined by Otl Aicher, one of the founders, in the following ...
VISUAL: Close up of the dove tail joints on the Ulm Stool.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... way: he says the Ulm model is a model of design ...
VISUAL: Close up of photograph on display which is of Lufthansa check-in counter with a lady dressed in uniform behind the counter. To the left of the screen is four sequential drawings of the Lufthansa logo starting as an arrow and gradually developing into a flying bird. (The Ulm School designed Lufthansa’s corporate branding.)
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... based on science and technology ...
VISUAL: Close up of Lufthansa’s airplane serving tray with one rectangle and two square plates that fit neatly onto the serving tray.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... and the product designer is no ...
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele standing in the RMIT Gallery speaking to camera.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... longer an artist, a superior artist, but he's involved in ...
VISUAL: Photograph of seating and aisles inside a Lufthansa airplane.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... decision?making process of industrial production. And that means ...
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele standing in the RMIT Gallery speaking to and smiling at the camera.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... you are not working in sort of an ivory tower by yourself having the stroke of genius how the most beautiful stackable tableware might look but you have to work systematically on your product design and your design and you will find, eventually, a solution which is sustainable and sort of timeless.
VISUAL: Video of a display cabinet in the exhibition. Inside the display cabinet is the SK4 which looks like an early model of a record player/radio cabinet with a clear Perspex lid currently tilted open.
Dr Martin Mäntele: Here we see the compact appliance, SK4 ...
VISUAL: Close up of the LP turntable on top of the SK4.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... a combination of an LP player plus ...
Visual: Close up of the radio dials on top of the SK4.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... radio and everything is new about the design ...
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele standing beside the display cabinet containing the SK4 speaking to camera.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... because up to then, appliances like this ...
VISUAL: Close up of the SK4.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... rather looked like furniture because people didn't like to have technical ...
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele standing beside the display cabinet containing the SK4 speaking to camera.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... products in the living room so they tried to hide them in chests of drawers or similar furniture. But Hans Gugelot, who was the designer, chooses ...
VISUAL: Close up of the dials and switches on top of the SK4.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... a fair coloured wood ...
VISUAL: Close up of the front side of SK4.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... he chooses a metal box coloured white ...
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele standing beside the display cabinet containing the SK4 speaking to camera.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... and especially the lid made in Perspex. That's an absolutely new thing and of course this gives the whole product the nick-name, Snow White's Coffin.
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele standing in the RMIT Gallery speaking to camera.
Dr Martin Mäntele: An iconic product of the Ulm's School of Design is the stackable tableware by Hans (Nick) Roericht ...
VISUAL: Close up of the corner of the display cabinet containing the stackable tableware. The year 1959 is written in black on the corner. The camera pans up to show the stackable tableware in the display cabinet.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... and it really is one of the first tablewares where every part is stackable.
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele standing in the RMIT Gallery speaking to camera.
Dr Martin Mäntele: The idea of stackable tableware we already can find in the '30s but that a whole set of tableware would be stackable; this is really the very first.
VISUAL: Close up of stackable tableware in display cabinet, camera pans across the different types of tableware – cups, plates, bowls, creamers, teapot, small and large pitchers.
Dr Martin Mäntele: And this is also typical of the Ulm School of Design: it was, more or less ...
VISUAL: Video of the entire display case of the stackable kitchenware.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... immediately put into the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York ...
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele standing in the RMIT Gallery speaking to camera.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... but also it was produced more than 40 years in a row between 1962 and 2006 and that's really a big success, of course ...
VISUAL: Video of the stackable tableware in the display cabinet, the camera is side?on to the cabinet.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... it also shows the quality of the product.
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele standing beside a display cabinet containing a small model of a car speaking to the camera.
Dr Martin Mäntele: Car design was not a speciality at the Ulm School of Design because the car industry was sort of the anti-Christ, it was the symbol of capitalism and, of course, the Ulm School had a ...
VISUAL: Close up of model of the car in the display cabinet.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... leftist bend, I would say.
VISUAL: Close up of car model’s numberplate which reads: autonova-fam 1965.
Dr Martin Mäntele: Nevertheless, two students and one automobile critic ...
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele standing beside a display cabinet containing a small model of a car speaking to camera.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... designed this car, but in secret ...
VISUAL: Close up of the model car, side?on to camera.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... and they presented this design at the ...
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele standing beside a display cabinet containing a small model of a car speaking to camera.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... Frankfurt Fair in 1965 and were awarded.
VISUAL: Close up of the model car’s front.
Dr Martin Mäntele: It is the idea of the family van but 20 years before the first one was produced.
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele standing beside a display cabinet containing a wooden stool in the shape of a box speaking to camera. As he speaks the camera pans around the Ulm Stool display cabinet and Dr Martin Mäntele.
Dr Martin Mäntele: Here we see the Ulm Stool. The Ulm Stool was designed for the new building of the Hochschule fur Gestaltung, the Ulm School of Design. It was designed by Max Bill, Paul Hildinger and Hans Gugelot.
VISUAL: Close up of black and white photograph on base of display cabinet showing Paul Hildinger building one of the Ulm Stools in his workshop.
Dr Martin Mäntele: And Paul Hildinger, he actually was not the designer but the Master of the woodwork shop.
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele standing beside a display cabinet containing the Ulm Stool in the shape of a box speaking to camera.
Dr Martin Mäntele: And it's, for me, really, the quintessential product of the School because it's simple, it's functional, it can be built quite easily with cheap material. Because in the beginning, in the first years, the School was really poor; they just had the money to build the school but no money to buy furniture so they had to design it themselves.
VISUAL: Close up of two black and white photographs on display at the base of the display cabinet. The first photograph is of three male students and one female student sitting against a wall at the Ulm School. They are leaning on Ulm Stools beside them. The second photograph is of two male students sitting at a desk in an office. One male is sitting on the Ulm Stool and in the foreground of the picture an Ulm Stool is being used as a lamp table.
Dr Martin Mäntele: And you must imagine that they really carried around the stool around the building from the students' hall to the lecture room to the workshop.
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele standing beside a display cabinet containing a timber stool in the shape of a box speaking to camera. He leans over and picks up an Ulm Stool for use by visitors to the exhibition.
Dr Martin Mäntele: Some stools in the exhibition.
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele, holding the Ulm Stool, points to the dovetail joining.
Dr Martin Mäntele: So first, you see, here, the dovetail joining which ...
VISUAL: Close up of the dovetail joining on the edge of the stool.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... at that time was still cheap to do ...
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele holding and rotating the stool around in his hands and speaking to the camera. He is standing beside the display cabinet containing the Ulm Stool. He points at the base of one of the sides of the stool.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... because time was not as costly as today. Over here, you see how they designed this bottom part with a slight intendation (sic) (indentation) here ...
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele holds the stool upside?down by the dowel rod between the two sides, speaking to camera.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... and of course, this is the way I could hold it and maybe even carry some books around the school building.
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele holding the stool and points at a photograph on the side of the display cabinet of Max Bill standing behind a bench which has an Ulm Stool on top of the bench.
Dr Martin Mäntele: And here we have even an image of Max Bill, one of the founders of the School, using it as a lectern during his lecture.
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele speaking to the camera. He is standing in front of a large black and white photograph of a class of students who are standing and sitting around worktables in the Ulm School of Design.
Dr Martin Mäntele: The most important contribution of the Ulm School of Design is that they worked on the profile of the designer as a profession; up 'til then a designer could be an architect or a painter or a sculptor but there was no school where you could go to to become an industrial designer ...
VISUAL: Video of six display cases at the exhibition, the year in which the product was designed is written on the base of each display cabinet. The camera pans left to right sequentially as follows: the Ulm Stool, 1955; SK4, 1956; Stackable Tableware, 1959; model of space units used as student accommodation, 1961; the model car, 1965; and a model of a street light – four lamps on one pole, 1966.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... nowhere in the world. And even at the Bauhaus, we still have artists working mainly as product designers and so the Ulm School of Design took much effort and thinking into developing this profile.
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele speaking to the camera. He is standing in front of a large black and white photograph of a class of students who are standing and sitting around worktables in the Ulm School of Design.
Dr Martin Mäntele: And in the end, eventually, the ideas of Ulm, especially ...
VISUAL: Black and white photograph of staff and/or students at the Ulm School of Design in a group posed for the photograph.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... this idea about the designer as a profession ...
VISUAL: Dr Martin Mäntele speaking to the camera. He is standing in front of a large black and white photograph of a class of students who are standing and sitting around worktables in the Ulm School of Design.
Dr Martin Mäntele: ... became a model for many schools worldwide. There are two schools in Brazil based on the Ulmer Hochschule fur Gestaltung and, of course, in Germany there are many schools who took the whole concept, or part of the concept, as a model for their own schools.
VISUAL: Four logos appear on the screen: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen); Stadt Ulm Ulmer Museum HfG Archiv; ulm; Goethe Institut.
VISUAL: RMIT University’s logo and website www.rmit.edu.au.
End of video
The following instructions will assist you to control the video player using the keyboard.
Starting and stopping the video
- Use the Tab or Shift + Tab keyboard combination to navigate the video player controls.
- Navigate to the Play button using the Tab or Shift + Tab keyboard combination.
- Press the Spacebar or Enter key to toggle between play and pause.
Closed captions
- Navigate to the closed captions button using the Tab or Shift + Tab keyboard combination.
- Press the Spacebar or Enter key to open the closed captions menu.
- Navigate to the preferred close captions option using the Tab or Shift + Tab keyboard combination.
- Press the Spacebar or Enter key to activate the close caption option.
Volume
- Navigate to the volume slider using the Tab or Shift + Tab keyboard combination.
- Press the left or right arrow to decrease and increase the volume.
Full screen
- Navigate to the full screen button using the Tab or Shift + Tab keyboard combination.
- Press the Spacebar or Enter key to toggle between full screen video and normal size.
Copyright statement
Copyright © 2014 RMIT University. All rights reserved.
Conditions of use
This item is available to RMIT University staff for official RMIT educational or promotional purposes. All uses outside of official educational or promotional purposes must be used with permission. Please contact copyright@rmit.edu.au for permission.