The second year of the project ran in the run-up to an exhibition on the Swiss design pioneer Willy Guhl under the label "GuhlSchool". In this context, the Limmat School and the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich collaborated to organize a museum week entitled Willy Guhl: young and today.

Together with designers and teachers, the pupils investigated the extent to which Guhl's ideas and approaches can also be interesting and relevant for young people today. Even before the museum week began, Christoph Goechnahts visited class 3./4.a. The course topic was determined by the pupils themselves: they wanted to look at comfortable and ergonomic furniture for their classroom.

The topic was also prepared in class with Natascha Hossli and Simone Perret. The students kept seating logs for several weeks to document their sitting habits.

During the museum week, they examined various pieces of seating furniture in the Swiss Design Lounge in terms of functionality, ergonomics, shape and material and explored the question "What should good design be able to do?" in both theoretical and practical terms.

Inspired by Willy Guhl's research on sitting, they investigated which seat shapes corresponded to their individual body sizes and shapes as well as sitting habits and determined collective values for the class. They then formed several teams and built furniture for the classroom from largely recycled and self-collected materials.

The experiences and insights gained in the "GuhlSchool" were used to further sharpen the profile of design education at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. They were directly implemented in the development of the interactive station "Thinking" in the exhibition Willy Guhl - Thinking with Your Hands (9 December 2022 - 26 March 2023) and in the planning of the education program and will lead to the conception of a new permanent exhibition of the collections, which will open on the occasion of the 150th anniversary in 2025 in the Toni-Areal.

Photos: Simon Zangger