History

When Prof. Rudi Högner began teaching the ‘fundamental principles of design’ in 1958, he received a teaching position in the same year and a guest professorship for design in 1964 at the formerly named Technische Hochschule Dresden. In this sense, TU Dresden was one of the first technical oriented higher education institutions offering studies in design. Prof. Högner’s role was to impart design knowledge onto students of engineering courses through optional and compulsory elective seminars. This form of subsidiary subject course was also offered until 1992, after Högner’s retirement from the position, by the Working Group for Industrial Design at the Institute of Industrial Engineering, before being developed even further. In 1983, a Lectureship for Industrial Design Engineering was established alongside a specialisation in Work Environment Design in the field of work design.

The research group for Industrial Design was converted into the newly founded Chair for Industrial Design Engineering at the Institute of Machine Elements and Machine Design within the Faculty of Mechanical Science and Engineering at TU Dresden in 1992, under the continued leadership of Prof. Johannes Uhlmann.

Alongside the existing specialisation, industrial design engineers were being trained in the new specialisation for product design within the field of mechanical engineering. Precision engineering students also took part. At the beginning of the winter semester 1999/2000, this training was transformed into its own field of study under the title “Industrial Design Engineering” within the discipline of mechanical engineering. Consequently, this area of study at the university gained new significance.

In autumn 2007, the Centre for Industrial Design Engineering, under the leadership of associate professor Dr. Günter Kranke, was integrated into the Chair for Design Technology/CAD, headed by Prof. Ralph Stelzer. Resulting from a structural reorganisation in the study regulations of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Design Engineering has been offered as a module within  general and structural mechanical engineering from the winter semester 2008/9 onwards. In the following years, the curriculum has been revised several times in order to respond to the requirements in concurrent industrial design practice. Since September 2012, the newly appointed Chair for Industrial Design Engineering has been led by Jens Krzywinski (Junior Professor 2012, Full professor 2019).