Köln International School of Design – KISD

The processes of opening and closing doors involve spatial ac­tiv­i­ties. We were intent in this half-year “In and Out” project on in­ves­ti­gat­ing sit­u­a­tions sur­round­ing en­trances and exits and on en­deav­our­ing to arrive at new find­ings and devise fresh sce­nar­ios. We de­lib­er­ated on a great many things: how will we open and close doors in future? Will we be able to think up any ap­peal­ing and useful ideas and blue­prints on the subject of ne­go­ti­at­ing en­trances and exits or simply spend­ing time near them?

Our product design remit was em­bed­ded within an am­bi­tious and highly topical meta-frame­work: in the context of this project we also sought to mark the cen­te­nary of the birth of Otl Aicher by ad­dress­ing our­selves to his design work, his writing and his think­ing.

The project was a co­op­er­a­tive venture between the Köln In­ter­na­tional School of Design (KISD) and FSB within the frame­work of the “otl aicher 100 – Grasp­ing with Hand and Mind” project. We pre­pared for the project by reading ma­te­r­ial by Otl Aicher along with an in­tro­duc­tion and report by Kai Gehrmann and by paying a visit to FSB. After a guided tour of the company’s pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties, we gained in­sights into the work Otl Aicher and FSB did to­gether. So as to ensure we em­barked on the subject in a well-in­formed manner, we kicked off with re­search work – partly in­spired by Aicher’s own thor­ough scrutiny of his clients’ spheres of ac­tiv­ity. We in­ves­ti­gated the handles on doors used to access every­thing from houses to garages and cars. We then carried out em­pir­i­cal trials on ac­cepted prin­ci­ples of closing and opening.

A number of these prin­ci­ples were put to effect in rudi­men­tary models so they could be grasped in greater depth. The find­ings they and analy­ses of actual sit­u­a­tions yielded formed the basis for product blue­prints re­lat­ing to the issue of opening and closing and of en­trances and exits. It was pos­si­ble to im­ple­ment these ideas and blue­prints both for the im­me­di­ate present and for some point in the future.

The in­ten­tion was that this very mul­ti­fac­eted project on an open topic that was thor­oughly re­searched should cul­mi­nate in blue­prints for con­crete prod­ucts, and for a handle or two if at all pos­si­ble, but we won­dered whether it could ac­tu­ally work. It did work rather well in the end – and also threw up several handles, ex­trap­o­lated from ob­ser­va­tions and analy­ses, from a great many prac­ti­cal tests on their uses and func­tions and, most agree­ably, in­clud­ing some un­der­pinned by Aicher’s de­lib­er­a­tions on the subject of grip­ping. Ex­er­cises in “de­sign­ing like Aicher” were not the ob­jec­tive, however. Otl Aicher was like someone from a dif­fer­ent world to the in­ter­na­tional array of par­tic­i­pat­ing stu­dents, a man from the past, and there was a big ques­tion mark around whether his thoughts, methods and work would still be of in­ter­est in the eyes (and hands!) of today’s stu­dents. Par­tic­u­larly so con­sid­er­ing that his designs and lit­er­ary out­pour­ings date back to a period up to half a century ago.

They became ac­quainted with his work from a variety of per­spec­tives and sources in the course of the project. We were curious as to what they would find in­ter­est­ing. What would they adopt, adapt and apply as their in­di­vid­u­ally for­mu­lated “In and Out” topic – and what would they steer clear of?

It was above all Aicher’s method­ol­ogy, the metic­u­lous way in which he in­ves­ti­gated the objects he was to design, from which we derived in­spi­ra­tion in this project. With clients such as FSB, Bulthaup and BMW, he in­vari­ably strove to de­ter­mine what it was they ba­si­cally pro­duced and how their prod­ucts were used. He wrote books on the issue that such as Greifen und Griffe, Die Küche zum Kochen and kritik am auto are still topical today.

We con­ducted ex­haus­tive re­search very much in this spirit on en­trance sit­u­a­tions, doors, windows, handles, and even cabinet and garage doors. Given that the acts of “opening” and “closing” have some­thing to do with me­chan­ics, we un­der­took an ex­pe­di­tion into the world of me­chan­i­cal closing systems during which we studied our own se­lec­tion of opening prin­ci­ples and, by repli­cat­ing them in models, were able to in­ves­ti­gate them in greater depth and make them more readily com­pre­hen­si­ble to others.
The most im­por­tant part of the project in­volved draft­ing a product for a given sit­u­a­tion we chose and in­ves­ti­gated our­selves. A greater number of handles than en­vis­aged were con­ceived, all with spe­cific prop­er­ties and trou­ble-shoot­ing remits for which a so­lu­tion was then found in the draft-de­sign.

The concept of design has been refined over the past few decades. The spec­trum of items that can be fash­ioned has become much broader and can no longer be con­fined to com­mon­place objects. Social struc­tures, com­mu­ni­ca­tion processes or ser­vices are like­wise defined, de­ter­mined and shaped by design.

The Köln In­ter­na­tional School of Design at the Cologne In­sti­tute of Science and Tech­nol­ogy (KISD) offers its stu­dents scope for getting to know the full breadth and com­plex­ity of design in depth and for sys­tem­at­i­cally har­ness­ing same.

In the course of their studies, these budding de­sign­ers acquire a prac­ti­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge of design that qual­i­fies them for present and future areas of action in the field.

The KISD has been pro­vid­ing its stu­dents with a unique pro­ject-dri­ven en­vi­ron­ment of learn­ing and re­search for over thirty years now, one that aims to play to stu­dents’ in­di­vid­ual strengths. All courses of study at the KISD are geared along in­te­gra­tive, in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary and in­ter­na­tional lines.