Studying at the Chair for Foundations of Art and Architecture

The design of rooms, buildings, landscapes and objects is perceived by humans physically, empathetically and rationally. This perception changes and is relative: on the one hand to the direct context (place, social space, etc.) and on the other hand to the extended context (history, culture, etc.). In addition, our perception is individually shaped and dependent on our personal experience in space.

As an approach to design theory, we distinguish between three types of perception, which in their interaction shape the impression of the designed environment that is specific to each person:

• Physical perception is a perception in relation to one's own body in terms of dimension, proportion and haptics. With the physical perception, we can understand the world. This is individually different but can be transformed into descriptions and quantifiable dimensions (measurements, geometry).
• The perception of affects is the bodily or empathic perception with which we sense the world. We can perceive phenomena of form and space that complement our physical perception. Examples are colour spaces, atmospheres or qualities of a material such as "the warmth of wood".
• Through experience and knowledge, we cognitively grasp a design. I call this a "rational perception" with which we can understand the world. Examples of this are semantic meanings and cultural codes.

These perceptions are basically biologically conditioned but not absolute. They are individual and dependent on our knowledge: In so-called top-down processes, we project insights that we have gained through our experiences onto the newly perceived information and interpret it. In this way, we can, for example, also cope with complex, visually ambiguous situations.

Our teaching on design is based on these three different, relative modes of perception with different, mutually supporting, theoretical-analytical as well as practical methods and forms of teaching. As in contemporary art, different themes require different, conceptually determined strategies for design.

In the basic course, these strategies are primarily set by the teachers and in the seminars of the upper school by the students themselves.

With this theoretically sound design practice, we would like to provide students with methods to develop strong, sustainable solutions. It is a theory of design, in contrast to design theory, which concentrates on the phenomena in the interplay between people, form and space, the architectural qualities, and practices these independently of the necessities of using architecture.