Materialdesign am IMD

Markus Holzbach, born in Limburg an der Lahn in 1969, has been a professor at HfG Offenbach University of Art and Design since 2009, where he heads the IMD Institute for Materialdesign and Adcvanced Material Studies. His work focuses on the role of materials in the design process and the method of „Design with Designed Materials“, he developed at the IMD and first described in 2014 with his own material eperience as an architect, materials- and processengineer and mold maker. This method is used at the IMD as a tool for research and teaching in Materialdesign. It is based on the simultaneity of intuitive and systematic, creative and technological processes and the dialogue between traditional and contemporary techniques and methods. The method focusses on the role of materials in the design process and combines the various areas of design known from disciplines such as design and architecture with the areas of analysis, research, and development known from engineering sciences and, in particular, from materials and process engineering at IMD.

After completing an apprenticeship as a mold maker in a ceramic modeling workshop, Markus Holzbach studied materials and process engineering (chemistry and process engineering of nonmetallic inorganic materials) at the University of Applied Science Koblenz in Höhr-Grenzhausen. After completing his thesis at Sintec HTM AG, Switzerland, he worked as an engineer in materials development. He then studied architecture at the University of Kaiserslautern. He was a tutor of the chair of Materials, Form and Color and received the BDB-Diploma Prize from the University of Kaiserslautern and the Dahlberg Medal for his thesis. He teached and researched as an scientific assistant of Werner Sobek at Institute of Lightweight Structures IL and Institute of Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design ILEK at the University of Stuttgart. There he earned his PHD in the field of adaptive textile building skins. He has been a member of the Chamber of Architects since 2007 and realizes his own projects in the fields of architecture, design an materialization. His work has received numerous design and architecture awards. From 2008 to 2010, he was interim professor of Mathematics at the Department of Civil Engineering at University of Applied Science Koblenz. Between 2010 and 2019 he was Dean and Vice Dean of the department of design at HfG Offenbach. He was a visiting professor at the Politecnico di Milano and collaborates with the Materials Experience Lab there. Lectured a.o. at RWTH Aachen University (Germany), Berlage Institute in Rotterdam (Netherlands) and Massachusetts Insititute of Technology MIT in Cambridge (USA).