Basel School of Art & Design

Basel's Schule für Gestaltung was the home of world renown Swiss designers Armin Hoffmann and Wolfgang Weingart. Recently the school was swallowed up by the University of Applied Sciences/Northwestern Switzerland, but the independent spirit still thrives at the school.

Housed in a historic Bauhaus-inspired building, the school still provides the foundation classes for students entering the art and design professions. In addition, they also offer an international non-credit "Basics in Design" program taught in English.

My first contact with the University was a lunch with the head of the International Office in Olten. The Olten campus is also the headquarters of the University and they are located about 30 minutes south of Basel by train. There were two other American exchange participants in Switzerland and we all toured the campus and had a great lunch together. During lunch, we discussed the Swiss education system which differs from the U.S. in the sense that high school graduates do not go to college immediately after graduation. Instead, they begin work as a paid apprentice in the profession of their choice for up to two years. This way, the student can make sure that they have chosen the right profession before going to college and investing time and energy in their studies. In this system, there are very few drop-outs and most people complete their college careers with a degree.
After the Olten meeting, Immanuel set me up with an appointment with Professor Martin Wiedmer, head of the Institute for Research in Art & Design. As part of a masters program, Mr. Wiedmer's Institute collaborates with the other departments at the Academy of Art & Design and creates documentation for various projects like public art and performance art. His Institute also works with sponsors and donors to help obtain the funding needed for various projects. An example of a recent research project is the study and documentation of the power of images. We toured the historic building and afterwards, Mr. Wiedmer suggested a second meeting with Peter Olpe, head of the foundations program at the Schule fur Gestaltung.

Mr. Olpe and I met for about an hour and he shared the curriculum structure of the foundation program along with examples of assignments from his classes. We were also able to visit one class that was in session and I was able to talk with an American student. At the end of the meeting, Mr. Olpe suggested that I contact Rolf Thalmann, the curator of the Basel Poster Collection. Lucky for me, Mr. Thalmann was available that evening, so at 5pm I headed to a secret entrance at Spalenvorstadt 2 and rang the bell.

Rolf Thurmann welcomed us and spent two hours showing us examples from his collection. Mr. Thurmann has been the curator of this collection of 50,000 posters for 25 years, so he had intimate knowledge of his collection. Thurmann knew many of the poster designers personally and told stories that can't be found in history books. It was obvious from his energy and excitement that he personally cared very much about this collection and really enjoyed sharing his knowledge. At the end of our appointment, he offered us a rare book, Swiss Posters from Historism to Computer Design, authored by him and published by a Japanese publisher. This book, containing 450 examples, is currently the closest thing to a catalog available for the collection.

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