Ulm School of Design
A school that tried to carry the Bauhaus on after the war. It opened in 1953 in Ulm, West Germany, with Max Bill, a Bauhaus graduate, as its first rector. There is a quiet story behind the money. It was funded by a foundation set up in memory of the Scholl siblings, executed by the Nazis. Their sister Inge Scholl and Otl Aicher, who would become her husband, started it. The continuation of a school the Nazis had closed was built with a fund carrying the names of a brother and sister the Nazis had killed — one of the strongest returns on this map, I think. What came out of Ulm was the collaboration with Braun. The Braun appliances Ulm had a hand in became the backbone of postwar German industrial design, and Weniger, aber besser — less, but better — the phrase Braun's designer Dieter Rams held to, is still quoted on studio floors today. Anyone who has seen the 1958 Braun T3 pocket radio next to the first iPod from 2001 has probably had the same thought at least once. The school closed in 1968 for lack of money. Even in lasting only fifteen years it resembles its predecessor. And still, the shape of the tool in your hand right now is probably downstream of those fifteen years.