Cooperations with external partners are of particular importance for the Faculty of Design.

Since the faculty was founded, we have cooperated in various formats with companies and institutions of various orientation and size. Whether technical start-ups, traditional craft businesses or medium-sized industry enterprises, whether research institute or museum, we work equally with partners from business, research and culture.

In dialogue, we develop design concepts and design solutions that fit the strategic goals of our cooperation partners. In doing so, we see ourselves as active players who contribute specific design competence and future-oriented design concepts as well as contemporary methodological approaches to project processing and product development.

Within the framework of our cooperation with industrial companies, we actively draw from latest market developments and take into account trends in technology and culture. We strive to develop sustainable solutions that reconcile entrepreneurial goals, business necessities and social responsibility.

In our cooperation with research institutes, we see it as our task to make research results from the natural sciences and from engineering comprehensible and applicable. For example, we are repeatedly asked to develop demonstrators that can be used to clearly convey the manufacturing and application-related advantages of materials and functional principles at trade fairs and other interfaces with the public.

A related field for cooperation is the development of communication concepts and information design in the service of knowledge transfer. Since the expansion of the Faculty of Design in 2018, science communication and work for cultural institutions has become increasingly important. We support our partners in communicating complex topics using the tools of information design, exhibition design and via the development of artistic, speculative future scenarios, making possible solutions and experiences tangible while encouraging reflection in the audience.

The Faculty of Design addresses questions from the context of business, research and culture early on in both the Bachelor's and Master's programmes, so that cooperation projects can be realised in very different modules and semesters.