The Köln International School of Design is part of the Faculty of Cultural Sciences at the TH Köln. The faculty sees itself as a research institution that intensively combines cultural sciences with design disciplines. The faculty’s research and teaching aim at the examination of cultures, especially with regard to their objects and artifacts, which are equally investigated and developed. The faculty’s perspective is to consider cultures embedded in cultural, aesthetic and social practices, emphasizing their »madeness«.
The faculty comprises three institutes: the Köln International School of Design, the Cologne Game Lab, and the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences. Fundamental to the research of all three institutes is the close interweaving of science and artistic/design practice. Design is understood as a cultural technique of inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge, which is reflected and opened up for interdisciplinary cooperation.
The new faculty’s research strategy maps out paths for future research that build on the faculty’s existing research directions. The research strategy aims to promote inter- and transdisciplinary thinking and to elaborate the specificities that characterize the cultural studies work at the Faculty.
Research strategy of the Faculty of Cultural Sciences (German & English)
Image: Luna Smolka, PRO:PER – Produktivitätsperspektiven, 2022