Kunstakademie Stuttgart – Design Rundgang 2012

July is famously the month we escape the tight constraints of the professional design circus and head out to annoy design students at their annual end of year shows.

Only to come back not only in awe at the quality of some of the works we have seen; but confident in the bright future of the German design community.

Whereas our tour traditionally keeps us safely within the confines of the former DDR – this year we’re including Stuttgart.

Design? Stuttgart?

We know. Stuttgart!

But lest we forget, Stuttgart is home to the Weißenhofsiedlung – one of the most important European Modernist exhibitions and housing estates – and in 1951 Stuttgart hosted the first post-war exhibition of contemporary American design.

“Design for Use, USA” effectively introducing Europe to the works of Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson or Isamu Noguchi.

Egon Eiermann initially moved to Stuttgart after fleeing Berlin and although he then quickly moved to Karlsruhe, Eiermann’s most important protege Herbert Hirche followed Eiermann to Baden-Württemberg and spent 25 years as Professor for Interior Design and Furniture at the Kunstakademie Stuttgart, including 2 years as rector.

Eiermann’s other major contribution to Stuttgart is the Horten department store – a building whose controversial construction story makes the current arguments about the new Stuttgart Central Train station seem like a quibbling disagreement over which shade of grey the cellar should be painted.

And Stuttgart is home to Porsche and Daimler-Benz.

And Nils Holger Moormann was born there.

But all that of course counts for nothing if the current crop of Kunstakademie Stuttgart students aren’t producing work worthy of the tradition.

We bow to no man in our admiration for what maigrau have achieved and will continue to achieve.

The names of further Kunstakademie Stuttgart graduates sadly don’t come so easily to mind.

And so we’re taking ourselves off to see what the coming generation of Stuttgart designers have to offer and investigate how one survives as a design student in an institution largely geared towards visual arts

We’ll keep you updated.

The ‘Rundgang und Sommerausstellung 2012’ at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart opens on Friday July 13th and can be viewed until Monday July 16th 2012.

Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart (Photo: Martin Lutz für Kunstakademie Stuttgart)