Programmed hope

This exhibition focuses for the first time on the pioneering architectural teaching at the Ulm School of Design (HfG). Founded in 1953 as the successor to the legendary Bauhaus, the HfG aimed to promote a sustainable material culture and at the same time strengthen the young democracy and the newly won freedom.
Initially headed by the founding rector and Bauhaus student Max Bill (1908-1994), the architecture department under Konrad Wachsmann and Herbert Ohl quickly developed into a hotspot of 'industrialised building'.

With a scientific and international network, forward-looking concepts for building in an increasingly technologised world were developed together with the construction industry. In addition to prominent representatives of architecture such as Richard Buckminster Fuller, Ray and Charles Eames, Frei Otto and Yona Friedman, leading minds from the humanities, natural sciences and engineering also shaped the teaching programme. Cutting-edge disciplines such as cybernetics, mathematical operations analysis and theory of science, represented by pioneers such as Norbert Wiener, Max Bense and Horst Rittel, became an integral part of the ambitious teaching programme. The aim was to develop architecture - as a kind of 'programmed hope' - in a scientific, interdisciplinary and socially responsible way.