I first came across the HfG Ulm through a publication called Uppercase 5, loaned to me by Doug Sandle in the mid 60s. It sits somewhere in my personal library, a guilty reminder of my kleptomaniac tendencies.
I found the content deeply unsatisfying and disturbing but went on to read the Ulm Journals. They confirmed my dissatisfaction and concern. I could go on at length, but I have already done so in many publications. Suffice to say that I find arrogant confidence in the absence of evidence deeply repugnant.
David
--
blog: http://communication.org.au/blog/
web: http://communication.org.au
Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
CEO • Communication Research Institute •
• helping people communicate with people •
Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795
Phone: +61 (0)3 9005 5903
Skype: davidsless
60 Park Street • Fitzroy North • Melbourne • Australia • 3068
On 15 May 2014, at 5:47 am, Klaus Krippendorff <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> dear mp ranjan,
>
> thanks for your consistent interest in ulm and your effort to complete the collection of these journals and make them publically available. i have argued for their online publications for quite some time and recently succeeded in getting gerhard curdes the last editor of the ulm student publication “output” to make its issues available publically. i am copying this message to him in the hope he can give you and all those interested the link to it. i haven’t found if by googling.
>
> you might also consider acquiring three retrospectives from former ulm students from one of which my piece was taken. i am also copying this message to monika mauss who is the current president of the “club off ulm” that published them. if you write to her, she is most likely able to tell you how to get hold of them. as to be expected of a diverse student body, these retrospectives report of different kinds of recollections, experiences, and show varying inspirations they took away into their future life. they belong to the picture of what happened at this moment in design history.
>
> cheers
>
> klaus
>
> From: M P Ranjan [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2014 3:08 PM
> To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
> Cc: [log in to unmask]; Klaus Krippendorff; M P Ranjan; Suchitra Balasubrahmaniam
> Subject: Re: Request 'Son of Rittel Think' & design thinking
>
> Dear Klaus
>
> The 21 Ulm Journals have been a source of inspiration ever since I joined NID as a student in 1969. Little did I imagine at that time the historic significance of The HfG Ulm for the whole space of design education in India and its far reaching impact across Asia and Latin America. It was much later that I came to meet former faculty and students of the HfG Ulm and through these meetings and my various readings begin to recognise the true significance of the idea that were brewing in the school especially in the early years. I visited Ulm twice, first in 2005 at the invitation of Rene Spitz to participate in a round table that was held at the school premises and later in 2008 as a research visit to the HfG Ulm Archive out of my growing curiosity about the impact of the HfG Ulm doctrine on design education in India which is still work in progress. In 2010 my colleague Suchitra Balasubramaniam and I offered to chair the two conferences at Bangalore and Kolkatta to coincide with the travelling exhibit on the Ulmer Model which came to India at Ahmedabad followed by the other two centres, Bangalore and Kolkatta.
>
> It was for these conferences we decided to prepare the scanned copies of the Ulm Journals using the original master copy that was our constant sour e of inspiration but unfortunately not available to so many other schools and its teachers here in India. I contacted Gui Bonsieppe and also Tomas Maldonado to seek their permission to share these as part of our conference CD ROM which is now available online. I am happy to say that after we placed our scanned version online we have found better reproductions online at several other sources which shows that HfG Ulm is indeed being rediscovered by interested academic agents and we are sure to see a lot more discourse on the school and its contribution in the days ahead. By the way the first six issues were edited by Tomas Maldonado and the remaining issues were handled by Gui Bonsieppe. In our compilation the issue number three is missing. I finally got the hard copy of this issue from Tomas Maldonado in Milan in 2011 and this copy is now in the NID Library.
>
> I have written a number of posts on my blog Design for India about the Indian faculty who had studied at Ulm and comeback to set up design education here in India. The history of NID that was published recently unfortunately pays very little attention to the pedagogic inspirations and internal experiments and debates that informed the NID curriculum and it also misses discussions on the faculty and alumni of the school by a wide margin leaving a hug gap in what could have been made available had it been more inclusive in its treatment. However, your paper that you have kindly provided access to is a fantastic account of the early days of the HfG Ulm and how it helped shape you from being a competent engineer to a designer and a design researcher. I am sharing this paper with our technology education leaders in India so that some of their schools may become more relevant and make their students innovative and sensitive through the adoption of designerly attributes without sacrificing the engineering rigour of their disciplines.
>
> With warm regards
>
> M P Ranjan
> From my iPad at home
> 15 May 2014 at 12.30 am IST
>
> Prof M P Ranjan
> Independent Academic, Ahmedabad
> Author of blog : http://www.designforindia.com
> Archive of papers : http://cept.academia.edu/RanjanMP
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On 14-May-2014, at 12:34 am, Klaus Krippendorff <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
> dear mp ranjan,
>
> thanks for making the ulm journals available. they are of course half a decade old.
>
> by the way, I was not only studying in ulm (http://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/138 ), horst rittel was my advisor. he was the one who introduced me to information theory, systems theory, cybernetics, game theory, planning theory and more. I visited him in berkelay and we stayed in touch.
>
> for terry it may be useful to know that rittel was a mathematician before he came to ulm to teach information theory after max bense had left. he did not celebrate mathematics or insist that designers should know mathematics. he introduced mathematical ideas that broadened the horizon of designers, enabled them to conceptualize and justify choices within spaces of possibilities they would have to create, made designers aware of the cybernetic/systemic properties of the society in which they were practicing, and argued that design involves strategic planning in the face of objectives by competing actors (a la game theory).
> I was an engineer before I came to ulm and bored with the mathematization of engineering design. I wrote my thesis on what became the semantic turn of human-centered design. rittel was initially skeptical but when he moved to Berkeley, he fully embraced it in his theory of planning tested in urban development. his definition of wicked problems did not mention stakeholders but does not make sense without them.
>
> wherever he went, rittel was not promoting his expertise as a mathematician. he had the uncanny ability to cut through the ongoing verbiage to get to the bottom of what was going on in his environment and managed to expand existing conceptions beyond what was heretofore imaginable. I think he would agree that the use of mathematics is confining. the ability to juggle multiple conceptual structures is what can expand existing horizons. I don't like the currently fashionable talk of "design thinking" for suggesting some kind of attitude that designers should have. to me, expanding existing horizons is what design education might well embrace as its goal.
>
> klaus
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ranjan MP
> Sent: Monday, May 12, 2014 11:50 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Request 'Son of Rittel Think'
>
> Dear Terry
>
> I am not at all surprised by the advanced understanding of design and the nature of the design problems since he was in a very interesting place during the late 50s, The HfG Ulm, in Germany, as a member of the faculty there. Klaus Krippendorff was a student then and the other faculty were in my view giants of design understanding and in particular in design education and practice, far ahead on many other schools of thought. This is captured in the 21 Journals published between October 1958 and February
> 1968 which helped change the world of design education in a way that Bauhaus could not do. The visiting faculty at Ulm included Bruce Archer, Charles and Ray Eames, besides the core faculty of Tomas Maldonado, Gui Bonsiepe, Herbert Ohl, Abraham Moles and Hans Gugelot to name only a few stalwarts of the time.
>
> Thank you Nigan for sharing the papers.
>
> I case anyone is interested in the Ulm Journals, Ulm 1 to Ulm 21, the set can be downloaded from my Academia.edu<http://Academia.edu> web archive under the Look Back Look Forward conference proceedings CD ROM that is available there.
> <https://independent.academia.edu/RanjanMP/CD-ROM-Publications>
>
> With warm regards
>
> M P Ranjan
> from my iBook at home
> 13 May 2014 at 9.10 pm IST
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> *Prof M P Ranjan*
> *Design Thinker and author of blog - www.Designforindia.com<http://www.Designforindia.com>
> <http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/>*
> E8 Faculty Housing
> National Institute of Design
> Paldi
> Ahmedabad 380 007 India
>
> Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054
> email: ranjanmp@g <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>mail.com<http://mail.com>
>
> <http://www.ranjanmp.in/>blog: <http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.com>
> (current and with downloads)
> education blog: <http://www.design-concepts-and-concerns.blogspot.com>
> (archival)
> education blog: http://www.visible-information-india.blogspot.com (archival) Page on Facebook <*http://www.facebook.com/Designforindia
> <http://www.facebook.com/Designforindia>*>
> Academia.Edu<http://Academia.Edu> <http://cept.academia.edu/RanjanMP>
> <http://www.visible-information-india.blogspot.com/>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> On 13 May 2014 06:46, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>
>
> Dear Nigan,
>
> Many thanks. This is a gem.
>
> I hadn't realised there was this original paper on 'RittleThink' of
> which the other paper is the son of.
>
> It's interesting to see how many ideas considered new to designers and
> design researchers now were seen a normal and everyday design theory
> by Rittel in 1971. I'm thinking particularly of the idea of seeing
> design as finding the best solution in solution space, and thus seeing
> design activity primarily as one of choosing.
>
> Best regards and thanks again,
>
> Terry
>
> ---
> Dr Terence Love
> PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI
>
> Honorary Fellow
> IEED, Management School
> Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
> ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566
>
> Director,
> Love Services Pty Ltd
> PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
> Western Australia 6030
> Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
> Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
> [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> --
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nigan Bayazit
> Sent: Monday, 12 May 2014 8:34 PM
> To: phd-design
> Subject: Fwd: Request 'Son of Rittel Think'
>
> Dear Terence,
>
> I found the following paper by Rittel. I will try to find out "Son of
> 'RittelThink''
>
> Best,
> Prof. Dr. Nigan Bayazit
> (Emeritus)
>
>
> 2014-05-08 18:26 GMT+03:00 Terence Love <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>:
>
> Hello,
>
>
> Please, does anyone have a copy of ' Son of Rittel Think' that they
> can make available?.
>
> Rittel, H. W. J. 1972b, 'Son of 'RittelThink'', The DMG 5th
> Anniversary
> Report: DMG Occasional Paper No. 1, The Design Methods Group, n. p., pp.
> 5-10.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Terry
>
>
>
> ---
>
> Dr Terence Love
>
> PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI
>
> Director,
>
> Love Services Pty Ltd
>
> PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
>
> Western Australia 6030
>
> Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
>
> Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
>
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]> [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>
> --
>
>
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> Discussion of
> PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe
> at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> Discussion of PhD
> studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at
> https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> Discussion of PhD
> studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at
> https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
> Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
> Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
