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Sad news to start the new year as the CBC has reported famed architect Eberhard Zeidler has died aged 95 at his home in Canada. Zeidler was one of the last living links to the Bauhaus school and the man responsible for some of Canada’s most significant mixed-use urban developments... View full entry
[...] the European Union sees a chance to create a new common aesthetic born out of a need to renovate and construct more energy-efficient buildings.
The proposal for energy retrofits is part of the climate actions at the core of the EU’s 1.8 trillion euro ($2.1 trillion) coronavirus recovery plan and could result in a sweeping architectural makeover, one that leaders have compared to a new Bauhaus movement for the continent.
— Bloomberg
For Bloomberg CityLab, Kriston Capps and Laura Millan Lombrana contemplate how the European Union's bold $2.1 trillion coronavirus recovery plan, and its embedded measures to make buildings more energy-efficient, could shape architecture and urban design on much of the continent. A new Bauhaus... View full entry
On this episode of Archinect Sessions, we’re sharing a conversation I had with Alysa Nahmias, the director and producer of the documentary film “The New Bauhaus.” We recorded this conversation last month, poolside, a few hours before the film premiered to a packed house in the Annenberg... View full entry
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... View full entry
Different Tomorrows: Design Futures Beyond the Bauhaus [...] brought together scholars, artists, activists and designers to challenge the Bauhaus as the movement of record with discussions related to gender, race and global perspectives.
Organized by graduate Media Design Practices Department Associate Professor Sean Donahue and Professor Elizabeth Chin, the series included a reading room, [...] projects questioning the Bauhaus legacy, and a docent tour of the Getty Center’s Bauhaus archives.
— ArtCenter College of Design
A thoughtful interview with Elizabeth Chin and Sean Donahue, the two ArtCenter College of Design-based organizers behind Different Tomorrows: Design Futures Beyond the Bauhaus reveals a bevy of interesting and thought-provoking connections between the Bauhaus and a variety of topics and... View full entry
Despite its surface rhetoric of rationality, clarity and efficiency, and smooth surfaces, the Bauhaus was never straightforward. Bauhauslers were engaged with everything that escapes rationality: sexuality, violence, esoteric philosophies, occultism, disease, the psyche, pharmacology, extraterrestrial life, artificial intelligence, chance, the primitive, the fetish, the animal, plants, etc. The Bauhaus was, in fact, a veritable cauldron of perversions. — Metropolis
Beatriz Colomina, history of architecture professor at the Princeton School of Architecture, pens a provocative archival photo essay in Metropolis highlighting some of the lesser-known transgressive histories of the Bauhaus. According to Colomina, who conducted research on the Bauhaus with... View full entry
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... View full entry
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. — artnet
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... View full entry
Like many cities around the world, the Los Angeles region is gearing up to celebrate the centennial of the founding of the Bauhaus. An upcoming panel discussion titled Bauhaus-L.A.-Now orchestrated by the Los Angeles Forum of Architecture and Urban Design looks to catalog the school's... View full entry
Perhaps the dream shoe for any Bauhaus enthusiast looking to stay "fresh," Nike has released their Nike Air Max 270 React with a lead colorway paying homage to the iconic Bauhaus school. The vibrant color palette would make any color theorist jump with excitement. The blue, red, yellow, and... View full entry
While architecture was not taught at the school for the first half of its existence, even today we speak of “Bauhaus architecture” and feel confident that we know precisely what that means — even though, often, what we call “Bauhaus” has no connection to the school at all. — The New York Times
100 years after the inauguration of the famed Bauhaus school, we must still be reminded of some of its most essential principles. Namely, Barry Bergdoll admonishes, the Bauhaus was never a 'style' - it was a school of thought that advocated for the abolition of distinctions between the various... View full entry
When Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius was preparing to leave the small town of Weimar, Germany due to pressure from the Nazis, he hand selected 168 objects for safekeeping. Including ceramics, metalwork, furniture and rugs, this collection is being exhibited together for the first time. As design... View full entry
Many imitators have missed the element of Bauhaus that breathed life into what might have become sterile functionalist designs; the surreal, sensual, irrational, and instinctual spirit of the Bauhaus. [...] If one seeks to emulate the Bauhaus today, it is vital to remember the elements of weirdness, pleasure, and even organized chaos that made it what it was. And, also, the moments where it failed to rise to fulfill its own ambitions and principles. — CityLab
Many people today recognize the Bauhaus — which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year — for its clean lines and minimalist aesthetic. In this piece, writer Darran Anderson delves into the history of the “other, weirder, irrational” side of the infamous art school. View full entry
Though he was described by architectural historians as "humorless," Walter Gropius "was in fact a charismatic figure," according to The Guardian's Fiona MacCarthy. His life and career are shrouded in myths of solemnity and passionlessness, though the fact remains that he imparted a significant... View full entry
“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?” — The Guardian
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. View full entry