Faculty of Design Augsburg University of Applied Sciences

Fakultät für Gestaltung (Hochschule Augsburg)

Augsburg University of Applied Sciences

Founded in 1710 the Faculty of Design has a tradition as one of the oldest German Art School. Since 1971 it is a Faculty of the Augsburg University of Applied Siences. With its four degree programmes the Faculty offers a wide range of subjects with a focus on contemporary communication and media design like corporate design, information graphics, animation and game design.

More details about Faculty of Design:

The true, beautiful and good comes from the faculty of design, but not by itself.

The beautiful: daring art

Art needs freedom - this freedom is guaranteed by law and forms an essential basis of our culture. Of course, our work in applied arts also needs freedom. We want to promote individual approaches and exercise personal responsibility. We want to be a laboratory for experiments and offer space for crossing borders, experiments and new developments. The freedom of teaching is also an essential basis of our work, which is constantly being attacked by the increasing pressure to exploit it. With this in mind, we want to dismantle school-based structures and increase options. Academic freedom does not arise from guidelines, but from opportunities. We want to understand our teaching as an offer, not as an obligation. The free choice of content and topics according to personal orientation should be facilitated and strengthened for students and teachers. We not only want to preserve academic freedom, but also try out new methods that will further develop our teaching for the future and expand the sovereignty of art and teaching.

Diversity

The artistic way of working has no right solutions, but looks for alternatives and evaluates the variety of possibilities in the discourse. We don't believe in recipes, we look for methods. Curious questions are therefore more important to us than clever answers. Our humanistic image of man is expressed in openness and tolerance. Our faculty wants to be the spiritual home for diverse schools of thought and art forms. Originality is an important quality feature for creative work. Therefore unconventional personalities are welcome and valuable to us. We encourage lateral thinkers and empower people who are looking for their own positions and who swim against the current. The cooperation between our staff is a vital role model for this - diverse, often contradicting, but always constructive and cooperative. Respect is the basis on which we want to maintain an equal and trusting relationship among ourselves. Diversity is also expressed in internationality. The intercultural discourse is an essential part of our cultural self-image. We are expanding our activities abroad and developing our partnerships with foreign universities into active cooperation. We are looking for new opportunities for qualitative growth and are developing our own forms of cooperation - not based on statistics, but on content. We want to create space for this.

The real thing: creating reality

We want to maintain a scientific and artistic discourse on quality. Our visions for the future are not primarily expressed quantitatively, but qualitatively. We are concerned with the critical discourses in art about media and market phenomena as well as current knowledge from science and research. Our search for knowledge follows our pursuit of truth. In our work we want to try to develop a new quality that can be forward-looking for the entire creative area. Theory and Practice It goes without saying that a university works according to scientific criteria. The theoretical discourse on questions of design is a prerequisite for our work. What sets us apart from other universities, however, is our practice: We can also do what we think up - we are doers! This is our success and our potential for the future. The essential basis for this are our laboratories and workshops. The faculty therefore wants to continuously expand the workshops and equip them in an exemplary manner for the future.

The good thing: developing community

The faculty needs highly motivated colleagues and employees who want to work on our mutual success. Joy and devotion help as well as mutual respect and tolerance. With this in mind, we want to invite all colleagues and employees to be involved and responsible in shaping our future. As a first step, we want to organize the tasks and areas of responsibility of all employees and bring them into a structural context in order to develop a broad participation of all and a culture of cooperation and participation.

Transparency

Teaching and studying is the meaning and purpose of our institution and is at the center of our commitment. Accordingly, we align all our decisions and our self-image with teaching (and thus with the needs of students and lecturers). To achieve this, bureaucracy must be cut and communication simplified. Orientation for students and teachers is made easier by h direct, simple and open communication within the faculty. We want to avoid centralism and increase the decision-making ability for teachers and students. To this end, personal responsibility is encouraged and paternalism is reduced. In the future, our administration sees itself as a partner for students and lecturers. It relieves lecturers of administrative tasks and organizes itself according to the requirements of teaching - uncomplicated, constructive and motivated.

Self-confidence

The Faculty of Design is one of the most successful faculties at the HSA, and one of the most renowned of the design courses nationwide. We want to express this success - also in our faculty itself. Our building should represent us and be our shop window. It should breathe our atmosphere and be a home of integrity for everything that defines us. We want to revive the inspiring architecture of our new building through our everyday culture and fill it with everything that is important to us. To do this, we remove administrative obstacles and technical problems (closure, alarm system, opening restrictions, etc.) and develop a free, self-determined approach to our building that invites students and lecturers to feel at home here