Retrospect

In 1987, the International Forum of Design IFG Ulm was founded by the umbrella organisation HfG Ulm Foundation. Its goal: to highlight and promote the social responsibility of today’s designers. A goal that consciously ties in with the intellectual principles of the Geschwister-Scholl-Foundation and the Private School of Design HfG Ulm, which it ran from 1953-1968. “While the HfG Ulm Foundation embodies the heritage and guiding principles, the IFG as a subsidiary company concretizes the intellectual and design-related added value in today’s professional circles. It implements the main ideas of the designers’ social responsibility on behalf of the HfG Ulm Foundation and through practical promotion work”, explains Dr. Dieter Bosch, CEO of the HfG Ulm Foundation and Managing Director of the IFG Ulm GmbH.

From 1988 to 2003, the IFG Ulm was at first assigned the task of organising the annual symposia, conferences and workshops regarding fundamental design topics. In contrast to the content-oriented higher education curriculum of the HfG Ulm, the IFG with its project-oriented focus and temporary meetings was able to react very flexibly to current issues. As was the case after the war, avant-garde thinking is a constant on the Ulm Kuhberg. As early as 1988, during public conferences of the IFG under the directorship of Eugen Gomringer, the issue of design and new realities was being discussed.  By 1997, the problematic potential of globalization was on the agenda – a subject that today dominates public discussions everywhere. However, the so-called „September-Conferences“ were increasingly imitated by other institutions, as the former HfG Ulm chairman Fred Hochstrasser noted: “the characteristic profile of the IFG was in danger of paling into insignificance”.

Through hearings like “Transformation” and “Blur”, in 2004 and 2005 the IFG under the chairmanship of Rene Spitz concentrated on the search for new standards, in order to implement the main idea of the HfG Ulm Foundation. For this reason, the promotion program “Designing politics – The politics of design”, started in 2006, has focused on the idea of responsibility rather than on forms, products, or processes. In doing so, the IFG has enlarged its discourse to include active knowledge transfer and production. Thereby, analysis, realization, communication and didactic mediation towards the (expert) public take on a key role.

This program, with its worldwide largest endowed sum of 50.000 Euros, is based on the three pillars of the so-called “Ulmer Modell” (taught between 1953 and 1968): theory and research; practice and action; and teaching and knowledge transfer. As well as being assisted financially, promoted projects are assisted intellectually by selected IFG Advisory Committee members (mentoring). Furthermore, the IFG Ulm provides scholarships to develop project-proposals for submissions to be made to other institutions.