The exhibition “Programmed for Hope” at HfG-Archiv / Museum Ulm focuses on the architectural experiments at the renowned design school HfG Ulm, which existed from 1953 to 1968. Visitors can experience a kind of retrospective “Rundgang” (literally “round course”)—a term used by art schools in Germany for open studios at the end of the semester. The “Rundgang” can be seen as a metaphorical key to both the structure of this exhibition and the main methods of HfG and its Building Department. 

The exhibition is organized as a “fictional curriculum” of an already non-existent school. In the center of the main exhibition room, visitors will find a podium with architectural and design models. They can move around the “tapestry of knowledge” on the walls, which features visual material from the 1st to 4th year of study.

This circularity and self-referentiality reflect the core principles and specifics of HfG, particularly the principle of feedback loops, which was central to the school’s innovative cybernetic and systemic holistic methods. Circulation graphs were a key element in the “Visual Methodology” course and the basis for algorithmic approaches in architecture, such as the ring-cell construction methods. Additionally, the school was known for its aspirations to be autonomous and self-sustainable.

Ultimately, this methodological self-referentiality or “methodolatry” contributed to the school’s closure. Many of the circulation graphs on display at the exhibition codified the movements of students inside the school’s building into patterns, formalizing the communication system within HfG. During the exhibition opening or “Rundgang,” this process worked in reverse—as if the movements of visitors decoded the circulation diagrams. At this moment it seemed that the feedback loop comes to us from a time when people believed that the best future could be systematically programmed. For a second, a retrospective “Rundgang” turned proactive.

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