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German far-right politicians want to declare Bauhaus led modernism in the 'wrong direction'

2024-10-26T08:00:00-04:00

The German far-right AfD party has attacked the original Bauhaus as a pernicious example of design, saying it led the project of modernism in the "wrong direction." Their statement, which echoes the disdain put forth by Hitler and the Nazi party, comes from an official motion in front of the country’s parliament asking for an official reappraisal of its legacy in advance of the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus Dessau in 2025/26.

They say: "The emphasis on sobriety and minimalism often led to impersonal architecture that is perceived as cold, unwelcoming and unattractive." (h/t ARTnews)

The episode brings to mind the outrage of the architecture community in response to then-President Donald Trump's planned executive order in favor of classical architecture, the tenor of which (e.g., that it restores America's grandeur) is akin to the views advanced by Viktor Orban and many other modern adherents to a more discreet form of fascism.

Google Arts & Culture celebrates pervasive influence of midcentury design with "Bauhaus Everywhere" collection

2019-12-05T09:00:00-05:00

The newest collection from Google Arts & Culture, called Bauhaus Everywhere came out of a collaboration with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation in Germany and six other partners including the IIT Institute of Design and the Guggenheim Museum.

The collection seeks to give a deep dive into all things Bauhaus, looking at the school's pervasive legacy and lasting influence on today's design aesthetic, hence the name Bauhaus Everywhere. Google aims to present the characteristic qualities of the movement that we continue to see all around us.

Moreover, the interactive offering allows users to view over 45 online exhibits derived from 10,000 digitized objects and 400 artworks along with virtual tours of iconic buildings. Everything from archival sketches to insights from the everyday life of a typical Bauhaus student can be found in the new collection.

COS pays homage to the Bauhaus with their remastered capsule collection

2019-09-13T19:30:00-04:00

Architects are known for their distinct fashion sense. From the clean, minimalistic look to the striking and avant-garde, fashion's relationship with architecture is close and personal.

Popular clothing brand COS is paying tribute to its Bauhaus-inspired design principles with a unique capsule collection for those who wish to embody the iconic design school's aesthetic.

Image © COS

COS designer Christophe Copin shares with Wallpaper, "We really wanted to work around form and function this time." Copin continues, "You need a coat to protect you from the cold, but maybe you don't need all its additional detail [...] We were focusing on the art of closure."

Image © COS

While some might view fashion trends unimportant and trivial, for those who appreciate the design history of popular fashion trends, COS' new collection could be a good fit, however. The attention to the Bauhaus school's geometric forms and monochromatic color palette make this collection simple and a basic in design and ...

Bauhaus Museum Dessau opens in slick 'Black Box'

2019-09-12T19:13:00-04:00

The Bauhaus arrived in Dessau with a bang. The world’s most influential art school may have been born in Weimar, but it came of age when it moved in 1925 to what was then Germany’s “silicon valley.” A new Bauhaus museum in Dessau tells the story of how the socially-engaged school of architecture and design flourished briefly until growing pressure from the Nazis forced it to leave for Berlin.

Courtesy Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau / Foto: Thomas Meyer / OSTKREUZ, 2019

The design of the new Bauhaus Museum Dessau emerged from an international competition held in 2015 with the proposal "Black Box" by emerging Barcelona-based addenda architects (then González Hinz Zabala) winning the commission.

Courtesy Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau / Foto: Thomas Meyer / OSTKREUZ, 2019

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who opened the new $31 million museum at a ceremony in Dessau on Sunday, remarked: "We share the need to preserve the diverse legacy of Bauhaus and to communicate the pioneering ideas of the Bauhaus school."

Courtesy Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau / Foto: Hartmut Boesener, 2019.

In her latest video podcast, Merkel commemorated the school's centenary and emphasized the impact the Bauhaus had on the 20th century, saying: "Rethinking the world, re-molding the world we live in, absorbing impetus from all sorts of different artistic movements."

Courtesy Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau / Foto: Thomas Meyer / O...

Celebrated and Detested: 100 Years of Bauhaus

2019-01-21T16:20:00-05:00

“Every child,” lamented Tom Wolfe in From Bauhaus to Our House of 1981, “goes to school in a building that looks like a duplicating-machine replacement-parts wholesale distribution warehouse”. Had there ever been another place on earth, he also said of Bauhaus-influenced America, “where so many people of wealth and power paid for and put up with so much architecture they detested?”

Observer architecture critic, Rowan Moore, on the vast and enduring impact of the "short-lived but longlasting" Bauhaus movement—both the sympathetic and the averse.

The famed school celebrates the centenary of its original founding this year.

Mobile version of famed Bauhaus building hits the road in celebration of school's centennial

2019-01-08T16:25:00-05:00

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus art school, the Berlin-based design collective Savvy Contemporary has created a movable, miniature version of their iconic workshop wing. Nicknamed “Bauhaus-Wohnmaschine” (Bauhaus living machine), the 15-square-meter home on wheels features a replica of the original building's iconic glass facade, conceived by Walter Gropius in 1925. It includes an exhibition space and reading room dedicated to the history of the famous school of design.

Over the next year, the Wohnmaschine will visit four cities, traveling from Dessau and Berlin to Kinshasa and Hong Kong. Throughout the journey, the school will hold symposiums and workshops intended to challenge traditions and narratives of modernity and modernism, and their inextricable relationship to colonialism.

Photo by Alexander Lech.

"Design education, discourse and practice is still largely dominated by western design principles and philosophies," says the organization. With this projec...

The Bauhaus Revisited

2018-09-12T17:52:00-04:00

Another measure for a work of art might be the range and violence of criticisms it attracts, along with their contradictions.

Maybe I’m just being sentimental, but I keep finding myself returning to the Bauhaus, now approaching its centenary. Much has been written here about the narrowness of current architecture and its instruction. I’m an outsider, yet I can’t help wondering if the field has followed the path of other arts into specialization and self-reference and self-interest, which is too often the case in my field, writing and the teaching of writing. What strikes me about the Bauhaus is the mix of influences. As I note:

“While Gropius wanted to revive the communal spirit of the guilds that built cathedrals in the Middle Ages, one is at a loss to find Christian tenets or iconography in the Bauhaus instruction or its work. The influences instead were esthetic and diverse, from Romanticism to Expressionism to Functionalism, as were the interests of the instructors, some of the most creative artists and architects of the time—Gropius himself, Mies van der Rohe, Klee, Kandinsky, Feininger, Schlemmer, Mo...