Faculty of Architecture and Design – Peter Behrens School of Arts University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf

Fachbereiche Architektur und Design - Peter Behrens School of Arts (Hochschule Düsseldorf)

University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf

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Peter Behrens

The painter, architect and designer Peter Behrens (1868-1940) was one of the formative artists of his time at the beginning of the 20th century. His creative activity covered almost all artistic genres and claims to treat all areas of life, exemplary for the new role of the modern industrial designer.

With his first house in the Mathildenhöhe artists' colony in Darmstadt in 1901, Behrens created a total work of art, designed down to the smallest everyday object, which brought him notoriety and fame across the country. From 1907 to 1914 he was artistic advisor to the AEG electronics company in Berlin. This was the first time in the world that a designer had an influence on all of a company's buildings and products - including graphics, business papers and advertising material. Behrens became the leading industrial building architect and designer on the way to the modern age. His studio in Neubabelsberg near Berlin attracted young architects such as the later Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier.

Peter Behrens had a special bond with the city of Düsseldorf through his work as director of the School of Applied Arts. Between 1903 and 1907 he fundamentally reformed the design education by rejecting superficial decorating and the unreflective imitation of historical styles. Instead, he called for forms that were appropriate to the material and oriented towards the practical purposes of the object and the prevailing living conditions. At the same time, he repositioned the integrated architecture education compared to the then backward art academy. With the Mannesmann headquarters on the Rheinuferpromenade built in 1911-12, at that time one of the most modern office buildings in Europe, Behrens also left an architectural testimony to his work that still shapes the image of the city of Düsseldorf today.

Peter Behrens School of Arts

The roots of the Peter Behrens School of Arts lie in the Düsseldorf School of Applied Arts, which was founded in 1883 and focused on architecture and applied arts. Under the directorate of Peter Behrens from 1903-07, it fulfilled a pioneering role in Germany, although Behrens ‘innovative teaching approach met with great resistance. After the School of Applied Arts was closed in 1919 due to financial hardship and a lack of students and teachers as a result of the First World War and its renowned architecture department was handed over to the Art Academy, it was re-established after the Second World War.

In the meantime, the Weimar School of Applied Arts was absorbed into the Bauhaus in 1919, which, under Walter Gropius, took up integrative teaching and brought it to worldwide fame. All other remaining arts and crafts schools in Germany were replaced during the Nazi period (1933-45) by “master schools for the creative handicraft”, and the Bauhaus was dissolved. A master school was also set up in Düsseldorf, which, despite its name, had no vocational training assignment. When, in the post-war period, the search for legitimation for these craft-oriented schools was carried out, they were fundamentally restructured in a long reform process (1946-49). With a view to the importance of design schools for industry, a higher education system for “craft, artistic and industrial design” was finally developed.

Thus, from the reformed “master schools”, the craft art schools emerged as successor institutions to the arts and crafts schools. In keeping with the Bauhaus idea, the declared goal was integration. The "constant contact between fine arts, handicrafts and architecture should have a beneficial effect on all areas". While the Peter-Behrens-Werkkunstschule Düsseldorf called for the integration of architecture and industrial design into the training canon in vain, the integrated concept was implemented in the Werkkunstschule Krefeld by the mid-1950s. In both schools, “a completely open, modular teaching concept without the usual year classes and semester units was introduced” in the spirit of free teaching.

In 1971, when the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences was established as part of the educational reform, the Architecture and Interior Design group of the Krefeld Werkkunstschule and the Peter-Behrens-Werkkunstschule Düsseldorf laid the foundation for the architecture departments and design. On the occasion of the 65th year of Peter Behrens death in 2005, the architecture department took on the name Peter Behrens School of Architecture. Since May 1, 2015 the closely networked interdisciplinary cooperation between the two independent departments of architecture and design within the HSD Hochschule Düsseldorf with the common name Peter Behrens School of Arts. The circle to Peter Behrens closes.

The Peter Behrens School of Arts trains around 1,600 students in the fields of architecture and design in four bachelor's and three master's courses as well as the interdisciplinary master's course "Exhibition Design". 45 professors, 60 lecturers, 30 specialist teachers, alternating visiting professors and external lecturers stand for theoretically sound applied design in all scales and areas of application of architecture and design.

The Peter Behrens School of Arts is internationally oriented and maintains diverse relationships with universities abroad. Regular projects and excursions as part of the “Intra and Extra Muros” weeks enrich the interdisciplinary and international horizons of the students.