About ABK Stuttgart

ABK Stuttgart offers a wide range of outstanding teaching and learning spaces to help students develop their individual practice. Courses take place in small studio classes and in close exchange between students and their professors. ABK’s unique studio und workshop culture gives students the opportunity to use facilities that embrace both digital technology and traditional craftsmanship. ABK’s specialist workshops connect students and staff of all artistic and academic fields. Learning in the studio and the workshop takes place through creating – a process that is at the heart of the ABK experience. In-house collaborations as well as partnerships with the State University of Music and the Performing Arts Stuttgart, the Filmakademie and the Academy of Performing Arts Baden Württemberg as well as Stuttgart’s major cultural institutions, provide students with a rich and stimulating transdisciplinary environment.

ABK Stuttgart promotes the unity of teaching and research: An extensive range of academic courses in the history, theory and philosophy of Architecture, Design and the Arts are available to students from all disciplines and academic levels. ABK aims to create a research environment where contemporary debate can flourish: With public exhibitions, lectures, symposia and publications, ABK maintains a multitude of activities that extend beyond the remit of individual projects. The library, archive and special collections hold materials to enrich research from undergraduate to doctoral levels. ABK is one of only few German art academies with full university status and the right to award doctoral and post-doctoral degrees. In addition to theoretical und historical research in Art and Design subjects, ABK offers a practice-based postgraduate Weißenhof programme of Fine Arts.

• Art, design, and science are essential elements of cultural and social life: We at ABK Stuttgart deeply trust in their significance. At our international study and research institution, they are at the heart of each activity in practice, research, theory and especially in liberal teaching.
• We are sensitive to many different layers of perception and to mutual exchange. At the same time, we have a great respect for the specific expertise and skills of the core disciplines of art, architecture, design, and restoration.
• Aesthetic relevance – as a common core at ABK – is considered critically: both when looking back across history as well as in relation to our present and our future. We see thinking differently and taking other approaches as absolutely necessary for all creative processes. Our power of imagination brings together – sometimes far-flung – experiences, subjects, and ideas full of fantasy. Art and new design emerge both joyfully and reflectively from the academy, taking the world by storm with their cultural and social impact.
• At the same time, we appreciate the approximate, the complex and the disparate. We try to grasp. We do not simplify. We enable and trust individual developments.
• ABK is a multidisciplinary academy of art and design that unites free and applied disciplines under one roof – a place of self-organization and self-determination.
• Respect, appreciation, and trust go without saying. We attach great importance to participation, exchange, and dialogue. That is why we provide institutionalised structures and places while also creating new spaces and formats. We communicate and negotiate important issues, processes, and decisions transparently.
• ABK enjoys significant public representation. It offers and seeks dialogue beyond the campus.
• We discursively and interdisciplinarily face the wide range of challenges and opportunities brought about by an age which is undergoing fundamental ecological, economic and social change.
• We know that our current practices, structures and thought patterns are not carved in stone and that something new and positive only emerges when we make a constructive effort.
• We are continually questioning and improving what we have. And we are constantly reinventing this wonderful and important place together.

Dated: July 2022

ABK Stuttgart is part of a worldwide artistic and creative community. It is home to a diverse community of students and staff from countries all over the globe. Domestic students and staff benefit from a network of partnerships with national and international universities, businesses, as well as social and cultural organisations. ABK’s exchange programmes open up the prospect of studying abroad, learning from doers and thinkers around the world, acquiring language skills and making international friends for life. The VESPA language centre offers German courses to incoming students, supports international full-time students and runs a wide range of classes in modern languages. Various bursaries and scholarship schemes are available for international and domestic students.

ABK Stuttgart offers remarkable teaching and learning facilities: A multitude of studios and over thirty specialist workshops form the backbone of ABK, providing a space for students and staff to experiment and create, with technicians and artists at hand to share their expertise. Moreover, ABK houses various exhibition spaces and lecture halls, a cinema, a canteen as well as a historic theatre in the city centre. ABK’s central library, archives and collections offer a wide range of resources and services to support teaching, learning and research within the fields of Architecture, Fine Arts, Design, Education, Photography, Art History, Art Theory, Philosophy and Conservation. The main campus is situated next to the famous Weißenhofsiedlung and its UNESCO cultural heritage buildings by Le Corbusier. ABK is reachable by public transport within a few minutes from Stuttgart central station.

The Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design is a legal entity under public law and a state-owned institution. It has the right to institutional self-government within the framework of the law. Its status is equivalent to that of a scientific university.

The ABK Stuttgart has an annual overview of fulfilled tasks and goals. For this purpouse, the Academy publishes the “Jahresbericht“ since 2017.