bauhaus
imaginista
Article

The “School in the Woods” as a Socio-pedagogical Ideal

Functional Analyses and Photographs by Peterhans

Hannes Meyer & Hans Wittwer with the Bauhaus building class (architects)/Walter Peterhans (photo),
ADGB Trade Union School Bernau near Berlin – Territory in the woods, 1928–30, Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
(I 1695/1 F), © Walter Peterhans Estate, Museum Folkwang, Essen.

The building theory classes at the Bauhaus focused on imparting a functional understanding of architecture. Building had become a science. As a result, the ADGB Trade Union School was designed logically from the inside out, with the requirements of the residents and dictates of the natural environment determining the form arising from the environmental and materials studies. Walter Peterhans’ photographs of the school images illustrate both the architect’s intentions for the building and the environmental studies conducted by Bauhaus students.

Hannes Meyer & Hans Wittwer with the Bauhaus building class (architects)/Walter Peterhans (photo), ADGB Trade Union School Bernau near Berlin – Main entrance, 1930, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Archiv der Moderne, © Walter Peterhans Estate, Museum Folkwang, Essen.

With the construction of the ADGB Trade Union School in Bernau-Waldfrieden, near Berlin, the Swiss architect and second director of the Bauhaus, Hannes Meyer, was able to realize his ideal of how a modern building should be designed and built for the first time. Meyer had been awarded the commission on the basis of his design proposal prior to being appointed Bauhaus director. In order to be closer to the building project than would have been possible from Dessau, Meyer set up a construction office in Berlin. Meyer’s collaborators on the project included Hans Wittwer, who Walter Gropius appointed alongside Meyer to develop a building theory class at the Bauhaus in 1927,1 who had previously worked with Meyer as an architect in Switzerland, as well as several students from the building theory course itself. Among them were Arieh Sharon (draughtsman, project manager of the teachers’ residences), Antonin Urban (draughtsman), Hermann Bunzel (project manager for the school facilities), Wera Meyer-Waldeck (who worked as an interior design), Edmund Collein, Philipp Tolziner, Lotte Beese, and Konrad Püschel. Working under Meyer meant working within a collective whose projects were collaboratively planned and realized rather than attributed to named individuals.

As with the oft-cited “vertical brigades,” whose main purpose was to ensure the involvement of Bauhaus students from all of the school’s workshops, Meyer drew collaborators not only from the building theory course, but from every Bauhaus workshop (carpentry, weaving, metalwork), achieving an ideal balance of material and craft applications. Meyer’s was a holistic approach to architecture, making no distinction between masters and students, or site managers and skilled tradesmen. In fact, Meyer’s design process was uniquely suited to the ADGB school commission, being that the architect’s methods were predominantly socio-pedagogical in nature and the complex itself was intended for the pedagogical/leisure activities of participating union members, who could avail themselves to training courses at the school for one or two months. Meyer’s task was, in effect, to embody the democratic structure of the union itself in his design. The construction site in the woods of Bernau appeared ideal for this project. Although secluded, it was still fairly close to Berlin.

Philipp Tolziner & Tibor Weiner, Study sheets of methodical research: "Housing under socialism", ca. 1930, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Archiv der Moderne.

Starting with the requirements of the trade union, Meyer had students in the building theory class at the Bauhaus draw up functional diagrams—charts and graphics in which the participating Bauhauslers recorded information on the building site, the sun path, and, above all, the needs of the intended occupants. A trial project by Tibor Weiner and Philipp Tolziner illustrates how such diagrams were drawn up, how carefully the Bauhaus students were in preparing them, and how, throughout their study project, Weiner and Tolziner followed a comprehensive approach to planning and designing.

For this study project, the brief was for instructors and students to design a housing project for factory workers and their families in an imagined socialist society. Their political ambitions thus awoken, participants were inspired in 1930 to produce a series of four “study sheets,” methodical research projects presented through words and graphics, entitled Wohnen im Sozialismus (Housing under socialism). The first completed study sheet charted a daily routine from 6:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., including external factors (time, temperature, location and conditions). On the same sheet, Weiner and Tolziner also presented two graphical renderings, one depicting the inter-relationships between people, and another concerning the link between people with nature. Findings from this first study sheet were used by students for a second study sheet presenting graphic representations of the factors of movement (e.g., what is the movement pattern of a blue-collar worker?). These were enhanced by diagrams detailing the sun’s path and analyzing fresh air requirements. With this information it was possible to precisely plot the optimal orientation for each individual unit within the larger grouping of housing blocks. These analyses concluded with floorplans for a single housing unit, where the incidence of sunlight in the various rooms was noted. On the third study sheet, the students drafted analyses and layouts of the other associated structures which, according to their plan, the housing complex should include—sun terrace, gymnasium, gangway, corridor, covered walkway, kitchen, individual rooms, and communal rooms. Here, they went so far as to annotate the diagram with notes on the optimal use of each space. Finally, on the fourth study sheet, which rounded off the overall plan of this hypothetical socialist housing complex, elevations and sections of the residential blocks were drawn up.

Hannes Meyer & Hans Wittwer (architects)/Walter Peterhans (photo), ADGB Trade Union School Bernau near Berlin – Glass hallway from outside, 1928–30, Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (I 1705/2 F)/© Walter Peterhans Estate, Museum Folkwang, Essen.

Hannes Meyer had the students of the Bauhaus building theory class draw up similar environmental analyses for initial project planning on the Trade Union School. On the planning application, these were situated next to the architectural plans so as to facilitate understanding. One plan showed the incidence of sunlight in the individual guest residences, as well as elaborating different furnishing options; another featured a diagram showing the incidence of sunlight in the classrooms and lecture rooms; a third was a study of the incidence of sunlight in the complex as a whole. Meyer and Wittwer planned the construction of the school complex on the basis of these studies, as a “sculptural interpretation” and “direct transcription from the functional diagrams.”2 The resulting design was more or less Z-shaped, made of yellow brick, and built at various elevations aligned with the sloping terrain, subdivided into a communal area, residential blocks for boarders, and a school wing complete with gymnasium and library. A glass hallway built on an incline, which Meyer described in terms of function as aVerkehrsschlauch3 or transit corridor, linked the separate building groups. Paths between communal, living, and school areas were designed to open up the complex and to facilitate visitors becoming acquainted with one another as they walked between the residence halls and seminar rooms. In the four residential blocks for boarders, there was space for 120 visitors accommodated in twin rooms. All four blocks were assigned different colors, with variations in shade used to distinguish each of the three floors. Color coding served to aid orientation, give residents a sense of belonging, and also served as a basis to split visiting residents into teams for sporting activities, generously allocated for in the plan, with an open air swimming pool and an adjoining sports facility. Opposite the boarders’ rooms, each of which featured a large window, lies a small lake amidst a group of pine trees; a soothing, sylvan view to enhance regeneration.

Based on the socio-pedagogical functions of the various building groups, Hannes Meyer’s collective designed the Trade Union School logically from the inside, the needs and ambulatory habits of the residents, out; the buildings’ shell. The individual buildings constitute functional units in themselves, with their arrangement resulting not from subjective formal rules of composition, but from their relationship to one another. The proposal for the site plan was also informed by the feedback and analysis of the building’s future users, the trade union members themselves. And in his arrangement of route paths, vistas, and open spaces, Meyer accomplished a completely new socio-pedagogical organization of communal life, manifested in the buildings and their disposition upon the site. Neither hierarchy nor authority were apparent: this was a democratic building both in form and function.

Hannes Meyer & Hans Wittwer and the Bauhaus building theory class, Technical explanation report ADGB Trade Union School in Bernau near Berlin (competition entry), April 1928, Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (I 1736 D), © Heirs after Hannes Meyer/Sondra Wittwer.

With this functional approach, integrated directly into Bauhaus pedagogy through their building theory class, Hannes Meyer and Hans Wittwer brought a new dimension to the architect’s profession. At the Bauhaus under the two architects, building became a “technical procedure.“4 The architect was to be trained as an “analyst,” “able to appreciate reality in all its manifestations.”5 The content of Meyer and Wittwer’s building theory classes therefore focused on imparting a functional understanding of architecture. “Building has become a science. Architecture is building science.”6 Designs for individual buildings or building complexes should proceed from the principle of function, including decisions about material color and surface structure. With regards to the Trade Union School, this scientific character was based on the several functional diagrams made by the Bauhaus students of architecture, in which the varying requirements of the future residents were analyzed, with findings integrated into the plans. By contrast, while constructing the Dessau Bauhaus Building between 1925 – 26, Walter Gropius’ focus remained entirely on the symbolic power of visual effect. In his memoirs, Philipp Tolziner finds fault with the fact that the vast glazed surfaces grew very hot in the summer, especially in the building’s workshop wing, subsequently described by students as a Schwitzkasten (sweatbox). Clearly a functional planning error, as Tolziner established in his and Wittwer’s classes, where, when carrying out preliminary research for other projects, he charted the angle of the sun in its motion across the sky, drew diagrams of the shadows cast, and drafted plans based on this data.7

Hannes Meyer & Hans Wittwer with the Bauhaus building class (architects)/Walter Peterhans (photo), ADGB Trade Union School Bernau near Berlin, 1930, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Archiv der Moderne, © Walter Peterhans Estate, Museum Folkwang, Essen.

As a result, the ADGB Trade Union School was designed logically from the inside out, with the requirements of the residents and dictates of the natural environment determining the form arising from the environmental and materials studies. Together with experts in the collective, the building was designed to meet the specific needs of its users and was adapted to suit the terrain, the sun path, and, based on Meyer’s socialist concept, facilitate an open-minded, friendly communal way of living. The architect’s focal point thus shifted from physical building to the uses envisaged, with its form developing quite naturally and directly as an outcome of research conducted by Bauhaus students and feedback from future ADGB residents, thus achieving the Bauhaus's intended aim of unifying theoretical classroom education and practical work in-situ. With this master plan, at this largely unknown location, the Bauhaus under Meyer built a center of education and wellness conceived and constructed in the spirit of both the Bauhaus and ADGB.

This shift in the way the Bauhaus understood architecture during Hannes Meyer’s period as director (1928–30) was harnessed by Walter Peterhans (head of the photography class founded at the Bauhaus in 1929), in his photographs of the Trade Union School, taken at Meyer’s behest. With the technical precision of the professional photographer, he perfectly staged the realization of Meyer’s functional analyses in the architecture. Possibly in consultation with the architect, Peterhans consistently chose perspectives that would illustrate Meyer’s claims for this socio-pedagogical building, and, in particular, raise awareness within the observer of the close relationship between architecture and nature. Peterhans presented the “school in the woods,” as Meyer liked to call the school, as an oasis of relaxation for the union members, set among pine trees, a place where students could focus solely on their education, and occasionally relax in the outdoor swimming pool. In Peterhans’ photographs, the school spreads out like a “learning factory,” with its seven building groups under flat roofs and three chimneys at the entrance aligned with the sloping terrain. It evinces no great ambitions to attract attention; rather, its aim is to serve those that spend time within its walls. His compositions emphasize the immediate connection between the interior and the exterior spaces, whose boundaries, owing to the extensive glass facades, seem to dissolve, with bright sunlight streaming through the interior spaces, creating a dramatic play of light and shadow where the dissolution of the complex’s architectonic barriers into nature plays a central role. In a photograph of the glazed corridor connecting the various educational and residential complexes, with its yellow bricks, chunky red-painted timbered ceiling, and windows extending from floor to ceiling, the focus is on the entire length of the corridor, due to the photographer’s placement next to a glass door between foyer and corridor. Discernible in the distance—typical of Peterhans’ architectural photography, which used human figures to create a sense of scale and function—a man enjoys the view of nature from the corridor. The dimensions and function of the corridor, extending past the entrances to the boarders’ rooms, and along the enclosed green area towards the seminar rooms and gymnasium, become immediately apparent: a place for casual meeting and conversation. Another photograph shows the end of the corridor in front of the gymnasium entrance and staircase leading to the classrooms. The space is filled with young swim-suited men washing their feet in the basin provided for this purpose. It is likely they have come from the sports ground or the open-air swimming pool nearby and are washing their feet before continuing on to their rooms. Another, taken from the end of the glazed corridor, looks upwards towards the color-coded boarders’ residences with their large glass doors. The factors important to Meyer during the planning of the school—nature and architecture in harmony, interaction between the students, recreation and education in one location—were brought together in a combination serving to articulate both modernist Bauhaus design principles and the precepts of the life reform movement of the Weimar Republic.

Hannes Meyer & Hans Wittwer mit der Bauhaus Baulehre (Architekten)/Walter Peterhans (Foto), Bundesschule des ADGB in Bernau bei Berlin – Lesesaal, c. 1930, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau (I 1687 F), © Nachlass Walter Peterhans, Museum Folkwang, Essen.

Hannes Meyer & Hans Wittwer with the Bauhaus building class (architects)/Walter Peterhans (photo), ADGB Trade Union School Bernau near Berlin – Glass hallway from inside, 1930, Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (I 1707/1 F), © Walter Peterhans Estate, Museum Folkwang, Essen.

Hannes Meyer & Hans Wittwer with the Bauhaus building class (architects)/Walter Peterhans (photo), ADGB Trade Union School Bernau – Glass hallway, 1930, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Archiv der Moderne, © Walter Peterhans Estate, Museum Folkwang, Essen.

Hannes Meyer & Hans Wittwer with the Bauhaus building class (architects)/Walter Peterhans (photo), ADGB Trade Union School Bernau – End of glass hallway, ca. 1930, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Archiv der Moderne, © Walter Peterhans Estate, Museum Folkwang, Essen.

In a photograph of the reading room in the now non-existent library, Peterhans focused on the plain wooden tables with their stools and lamps, which, standing at right angles to the windows, extend the whole length of the wall, oil radiators beneath them (one of the first oil heating systems in Germany). This positioning was designed to encourage concentration on the learning material while enabling a side view of the glazed corridor, the residential blocks and—some distance away across the large lawn area—the foyer building with its auditorium and canteen. Another view of a similarly appointed room in the residential blocks, highlights the functional Bauhaus-designed furnishings: the tubular steel beds designed in the Bauhaus carpentry workshop, the waste paper baskets made from an indestructible vulcanized fiber; the desks conceived by Bauhausler Wera Meyer-Waldeck; the simple chairs by Thonet; the shaving mirror by Marcel Breuer (the double wardrobes were likely designed at the Bauhaus as well). All the furniture is built according to one principle: it is functional, versatile, and built from inexpensive materials according to the highest standards of the day.

As noted previously, Walter Peterhans’ photographs do more than merely document the school. His images illustrate both the architect’s intentions for the building—the arrangement of the various building groups and their meaningful connections with one another—and the planning process itself, the environmental studies conducted by Bauhaus students to identify the needs of the residents and analyze the characteristics of the building site. One might surmise this approach was not the photographer’s idea alone, but was developed in concert with Meyer. In any case, it marks a clear turning point in the presentation of Bauhaus architecture, contrasting sharply with the heroic representations of the Bauhaus building under Gropius, taken from oblique angles by Lucia Moholy. Peterhans’ photographs, on the other hand, focus on the realization of the functional diagrams in the architecture. In so doing, the photographer manages both to close the distance between the observer and the Meyer-Wittwer building and the Bauhaus interior so that the viewer feels as if they are sitting in the reading room or entering the students’ boarding room, and also convey the overall concept of the building groups and their relationships to one another by means of a purposefully deployed range. In the process, Peterhans developed a photographic style mirroring the stripped-down functionalist aesthetic of the Bauhaus, using light, shadow, perspective, and scale to give tangible shape to both the qualities of the architecture and the aspirations of the architects’.

Translation from German by Rebecca Philipps Williams.

●Footnotes
  • 1 The same year the Bauhaus began offering a degree in architecture.
  • 2 Hannes Meyer, construction specification from Hannes Meyer’s unpublished ‘Bauhaus-Album’, manuscript, DAM.
  • 3 Ibid.
  • 4 Hannes Meyer: “Building“ (1928), in: Buildings, Projects, and Writings, Teufen AR, Switzerland, Arthur Niggli Ltd., 1965; https://thecharnelhouse.org/2013/08/10/hannes-meyer/; retrieved 2 July 2018.
  • 5 Klaus-Jürgen Winkler: Der Architekt Hannes Meyer. Anschauungen und Werk. Berlin, VEB Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1989, 54.
  • 6 Hannes Meyer: “Building“ (1928).
  • 7 Philipp Tolziner: “Mit Hannes Meyer am Bauhaus und in der Sowjetunion. Erinnerungen eines ehemaligen Mitgliedes der Bauhausbrigade ‘Rotfront’”, 38-page typescript, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin.
●Author(s)
●Latest Articles
●Article
The Spread of the Bauhaus in China

As early as the end of the 19th century up to the beginning of the 20th century, which is to say before the founding of the Bauhaus and after China’s forced opening through war to the outside world, China had already been witness to various experiments in modernization. Such experiments contributed to the laying down of a foundational mindset necessary for the acceptance of the Bauhaus in China’s traditional culture. → more

●Article
Richard Paulick and the Remaking of a Greater Shanghai 1933–1949

The article focusses on Richard Paulick’s sixteen-year exile in Shanghai. It is an examination of the interaction between a Bauhaus socialist and a Far East port city in its rush to modernize at the midpoint of the twentieth century. → more

●Article
Modern Vernacular — Walter Gropius and Chinese Architecture

This essay explores the connection between Walter Gropius and I. M. Pei, as well as the influence of the one on the other. After completing his studies, I. M. Pei worked with Gropius on plans for a university in Shanghai, which he subsequently realized in Taiwan, than in association with Chang Chao-Kang and Chen Chi-Kuan. → more

●Article
Bauhausmoderne und Chinesische Tradition — Franz Ehrlichs Entwurf für ein Haus des Handels in Peking (1954–1956)

In den frühen 1950er-Jahren bestanden gute diplomatische, politische und ökonomische Beziehungen zwischen der Volksrepublik China und der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. Beide, sich als sozialistisch verstehende Staaten, waren 1949 gegründet worden. In diesem Aufsatz geht es um die besondere Beziehung zur chinesischen Architektur, Kunst und Gestaltung, die Franz Ehrlich entwickelte. → more

●Article
Bauhaus and the Origin of Design Education in India

This article is an example of “writing by being,” because the author had the privilege of being part of the pilot “batch” of Indian design teachers. These students, many from an engineering background, were to be India’s future design educators, and their first exposure to design education took place at the newly-founded National Institute of Design, India’s first design institute, established in 1961 and inspired to a large measure by Bauhaus ideology. → more

●Article
Moving Away from Bauhaus and Ulm — The Development of an Environmental Focus in the Foundation Programme at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad

The National Institute of Design (NID) came into existence at the intersection of postcolonial aspirations to design a new nation and the new citizen and Cold War cultural diplomacy. It was located in Ahmedabad, a medieval western Indian city on the banks of the river Sabarmati, famous for its textile mills and as the place where Gandhi began his anti-British campaigns. Initially it was housed, perhaps quite appropriately, in a museum building designed by Le Corbusier where discussions began on the appropriate educational philosophy and pedagogy: Who would produce new lotas for the new nation? Who would teach them and how? → more

●Article
Contemporary Reflections on NID History — Teaching through the Design Archive

I often stage chance encounters for students with archival materials at the NID: a rare photograph of the building in construction, an odd handwritten scribble on a drawing by M.P. Ranjan, a stunning collection of sound recordings by David Tudor and John Cage. The amazement and wonder created by this staging becomes the starting point for the pedagogical value of archives. → more

●Article
On Behalf of Progressive Design — Two Modern Campuses in Transcultural Dialogue

“The Indian state has only existed for 13 years. And world history would be unthinkable without its unorthodox influence. India has delivered more new content in the last decade than any other country.” HfG Ulm founder Otl Aicher’s report on his trip to India in 1960 and the slides he took during his journey across the country are impressive observations of a country in upheaval. From today’s perspective, this material reads like an overture to the future collaboration between two design schools: the HfG Ulm and the NID in Ahmedabad.   → more

●Article
Design for Need — Der Milchkiosk von Sudhakar Nadkarni

Während der Designstudent Sudhakar Nadkarni 1965 an der HfG Ulm an seiner Diplomarbeit zur Gestaltung eines Milchkiosks für seine Heimatstadt Bombay arbeitete, reiste der deutsche Architekt und Designer Hans Gugelot an das 1961 gegründete NID in Ahmedabad. An beiden Schulen war man überzeugt, dass nur ein rational begründetes Design, das sich mit den grundlegenden Systemen der Gesellschaft, der Infrastruktur, der Gesundheits- und Nahrungsmittelversorgung befasst, die unmittelbaren Bedürfnisse der Menschen ernst nehmen kann. Der Milchkiosk-Entwurf ist ein herausragendes Dokument einer Gestaltungshaltung, die Design als ein Mittel zur Verbesserung des Alltags begreift. → more

●Photo Essay
Abraham & Thakore — NID Fashion

Like most designer start-ups, A&T started as a very small design studio. We began by designing and manufacturing modest batches of textile and fashion items, manufactured mostly on handlooms and tiny printing and embroidery sheds in India’s still pervasive small-scale industrial sector. And indeed, 25 years on, our supply chain is still reliant on and supportive of many of these small enterprises. → more

●Article
Habib Rahman — A Bauhaus Legacy in India

Habib Rahman, born 1915 in Calcutta, studied architecture at MIT under Lawrence Anderson, William Wurster and Walter Gropius, who taught next door at Harvard University. Gropius got Rahman his first job after graduation in his firm where Rahman worked until he returned to India in 1946. Ram Rahman’s account of his father’s legacy and his contribution to modernist Indian architecture. → more

●Video
Architects’ Congress

The passenger ship Patris II transported the participants of the 4th International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAM) from Marseilles to Athens and back. Bauhaus teacher Moholy-Nagy, travelling as a “friend of the new building movement” produced this half-hour soundless film as a travel journal. → more

●Article
Der CIAM-Protest — Von Moskau zur Patris II (1932)

Entgegen allen internationalen Erwartungen – schließlich waren Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Erich Mendelsohn und andere eingeladen – befand sich am 29. Februar 1932 kein moderner Architekt unter den Hauptpreisträgern der ersten Wettbewerbsrunde für den Palast der Sowjets in Moskau. → more

●Article
A Migratory Life—from Dessau to Moscow to Mexico — Hannes Meyer and Lena Bergner and the Arts

In this article Marion von Osten focusses on the curatorial research involved in two of the project’s four chapters: Moving Away and Learning From. She rethinks the importance of the migratory life of the Swiss architect Hannes Meyer and Bauhaus weaver Lena Bergner, starting with Meyer’s two-year directorship of the Bauhaus Dessau, the couple’s time working in the USSR (1931–1936), and, finally, their decade-long period as exiles in Mexico, which lasted from 1939 to 1949, the year they returned to Switzerland. → more

●Article
Die Sozialisierung des Wissens und das Streben nach Deutungsmacht — Lena Bergners Transfer der Isotype nach Mexiko

Lena Bergner wird normalerweise als am Bauhaus ausgebildete Textilgestalterin charakterisiert. In ihrem zehnjährigen Exil in Mexiko widmete sie sich allerdings der grafischen Gestaltung, fast ausschließlich für antifaschistische Projekte. Eine Ausnahme sind ihre weitestgehend unbekannten Leistungen im Bereich der visuellen Kommunikation für das mexikanische Schulbaukomitee. Hier verwendete sie Otto Neuraths „Wiener Methode der Bildstatistik“ (Isotype). Dieser Text erörtert den Transfer der Isotype von Europa nach Mexiko am Beispiel von Bergner und ihren möglichen Berührungspunkten mit Neuraths bildpädagogischen Methode und untersucht, wie sich die Isotype von propagandistischen visuellen Kommunikationsformen abgrenzt. → more

●Interview
Praised, Sentenced, Forgotten, Rediscovered — 62 Members of the Bauhaus in the Land of the Soviets

In this interview with Astrid Volpert, she reviews her decades of research on Bauhäusler who emigrated to the SU and makes it clear that there were far more than seven of them heading east. Persons traveling from the Bauhaus to Russia were from eleven countries. They belonged to various denominations—there were Protestants and Catholics, Jews and atheists. Of the 15 women and 47 men, only 21 of them were members of communist parties. → more

●Translation
The Moscow Bauhaus Exhibition Catalogue (1931)

When Hannes Meyer had emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1930, one of the first things he did was organizing an exhibition about “his” Bauhaus. As early as in February 1931 Meyer had the exhibition Bauhaus Dessau. Period of Hannes Meyer’s directorship. 1928-1930 already ready to receive the Moscow public. It was shown at the renown State Museum of New Western Art. This is the first English translation of the exhibition catalogue. → more

●Article
After the Ball — Hannes Meyer Presenting the Bauhaus in Moscow

Hannes Meyer arrived in the USSR just a couple of months after being dismissed from his position as Bauhaus director in October 1930. These months were filled with attempts by Meyer and his supporters to protest this decision through all possible means: media campaigns, open letters, student demonstration and court trials. After arriving in Moscow, Meyer carried on the fight against his unfair dismissal. → more

●Article
From Recognition to Rejection — Hannes Meyer and the Reception of the Bauhaus in the Soviet Union

The history of the Stalinist critique of the Bauhaus and Hannes Meyer has two chapters. The first chapter spans the time from 1929 to the Architects’ Congress in the Soviet Union in 1937; the second consists in the condemnation of the Bauhaus in the GDR that took place on the trip by East German architects to Moscow in spring of 1950. This text tells the story of the first chapter. → more

●Article
Meyer’s Russia, or the Land that Never Was

It is quite hard to know where to start with Hannes Meyer in Moscow. It’s hard because, while there is plenty of documentation on him and his team in the Bauhaus Brigade—as well as other Western designers and architects (of these, Ernst May is at least as significant as Meyer, as is the Dutch designer Mart Stam, and each went on to produce more substantial work than Meyer after their respective Russian episodes)—the legacy of his work there presents certain difficulties in evaluating. → more

●Article
Moving Away to the Other End of the World — Reflections on the Letters Between Tibor Weiner and Hannes Meyer from the DAM Archive

This article examines the correspondence between a teacher (Hannes Meyer) and his former student (Tibor Weiner), who met at the Bauhaus in Dessau, going on to live for a period in the Soviet Union. Each migrated to Latin America shortly before the outbreak of World War Two, and returned to Europe in the late 1940s. The surviving letters between Meyer and Weiner, preserved in the DAM Archive in Frankfurt am Main, are not only a testimony of comradeship but also a window into some key moments in the first half of the twentieth century. → more

●Artists Work
Bauhaus in Russia — Haunted Houses

The following material was produced during the photographic workshop Bauhaus in Russia: Haunted houses, which took place in the framework of the exhibition bauhaus imaginista. Moving Away: The Internationalist Architect at the museum of contemporary art Garage in Moscow. Through an open-call we invited participants from several Russian cities to take part in the visual research on both the visible and invisible legacies of the “bauhauslers”. → more

●Artist Work
To Philipp Tolziner

For the exhibition bauhaus imaginista: Moving Away. The Internationalist Architect at Garage Contemporary Museum of Art, the contemporary artist Alice Creischer has been invited to respond to the personal archive of Bauhaus architect Philipp Tolziner. She produced reading of material relating to the architect’s socialist backgrounds and his work in the Soviet Union.  → more

●Artist Work
Sketch One: Lotte and Hermina — Script-Reading and Screening by Wendelien van Oldenborgh

The script that the artist Wendelin van Oldenborgh created for bauhaus imaginista: Moving Away. The Internationalist Architect as a public moment is an insight into the development of her larger film project which will premiere as a contribution to the bauhaus imaginista exhibition at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, March 2019. It features archive material around the personas Lotte Beese and Hannes Meyer, Hermine Huiswoud and Langston Hughes. → more

●Article
Hamhŭng’s Two Orphans (To Konrad Püschel) — East German Internationalism in North-Korea Emerging through a Chronopolitical Lens

Doreen Mende’s work Hamhung’s Two Orphans, which borrows its title from a chapter of the cine-essay Coréennes (1959) by Chris Marker, proposes to trace the transformation of the Bauhaus’s relevance from its prewar internationalist modernity into elements of the GDR’s socialist internationalism when architecture operated as a state-crafting instrument during the global Cold War. → more

●Article
“All artists interlock!” — How Bauhäuslers created the “New Germany” and promoted the national economy

The Third Reich was in ruins, the surrender not yet signed. An architect painstakingly working his way through the debris to the Schöneberg town hall found a sign on the door of the building authority with his name. Appointed to office by the German Communist Party (KPD), city counselor Hans Scharoun immediately looked around for his people: “I’ve looked everywhere for you, where are you? Here we go!” → more

●Artist Work
Scenes from the Most Beautiful Campus in Africa — A Film about the Ife Campus

Zvi Efrat, 2019, film stills from the exhibition video projection, 25 min, color, sound, English.
Courtesy of the artist. → more

●Article
The Legacy of Arieh Sharon’s Postcolonial Modernist Architecture at the Obafemi Awolowo University Campus in Ile-Ife Nigeria

The significance of Arieh Sharon’s postcolonial modernist architecture at Obafemi Awolowo University Campus at Ile-Ife is multi-dimensional. Built between 1960 and 1978, at first glance the campus core consists of an ensemble of modernist buildings. In this article Bayo Amole examines some of the physical and conceptual characteristics of the campus master plan and core area design in order to illustrate their significance as examples of postcolonial modernist architecture—identifying the most important aspects of their legacy, which has continued to guide the design of the campus as it has developed over the course of more than a half century. → more

●Article
Bauhaus Modernism and the Nigerian Connection — The Socio-Political Context of Arieh Sharon and the University Of Ife Design

It should be considered “against the run of play” for a Bauhaus-trained Israeli architect such as Arieh Sharon to have been named designer of the post-independence University of Ife. This paper examines how developments in the socio-political context of Nigeria and international politics—including history and policies in the education sector—“constructed” Sharon’s involvement in the University of Ife design and the spread of Bauhaus modernism to tropical architecture. → more

●Article
Nigerian Campus Design — A Juxtaposition of Traditional and Contemporary Architecture

The early to mid-twentieth century saw the International Style and modernism rapidly influence major Nigerian cities and towns, first as a result of colonialism and then independence. Discussing the architecture of two first-generation Nigerian Universities, the University of Ibadan and Obafemi Awolowo University, this article builds upon the established discourse concerning how architects assimilated the International Style into the tropical climate and sociocultural context of Nigeria. → more

●Article
Colonial Architecture in Ile-Ife

The architectural heritage credited to the colonial intervention of the British in Nigeria is a blend of features imported by Europeans accustomed to a temperate climate, mixed with adaptations derived from the principles of modern architecture and concessions to the region’s tropical climate. As such, colonial buildings of this era can be regarded as a hybrid architectural style. → more

●Article
The New Culture School for Arts and Design — Launched in 1995

The New Culture School for Arts and Design in Ibadan, Nigeria has involved the development and construction of a space for creative people working in many different media in order to advance their professional proficiency in the fine arts, theater, music, film, photography, design, writing and more. → more

●Article
Nation Building through Campus Architecture — Israeli Architects Arieh Sharon and Eldar Sharon’s Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Campus in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, 1962–1976

The campus of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, Nigeria, the first phase of which was built between 1962 and 1972, is a fascinating example of modernist architecture in Africa. As a case study of Africa’s assimilation of the modern style, its design is intriguing also due to the fact that it was built by Israeli architect Arieh Sharon (1900–1984), aided by his son, Eldar Sharon (1933–1994). → more

●Article
Beyond Cement and Iron — Contextualizing Israeli Architecture in Africa

My focus on construction and planning is not incidental. These fields played a crucial role in space-shaping processes during the first decades of the Israeli state, as well as in the construction of the territorial identity of its new citizens. Simultaneously, during the 1960s, the modernist construction projects undertaken in African countries post-independence were also evidence of a desire amongst newly independent African nations for postcolonial national unity. → more

●Article
Tropical Architecture / Building Skin

Like the modernist architecture that preceded it, tropical architecture was co-defined with modern bodies and the bodies of the tropics: initially those of colonizers but soon colonized bodies as well. The technologies of tropical architecture, based on a modernist rationalism adapted to tropical climatic conditions, were, in turn, offered as a developmental asset to colonized subjects, especially young people. → more

●Article
A Hot Topic — Tropical Architecture and Its Aftermath

Both the tropical architecture discourse in general and British notions of modernism in particular were embedded in larger discussions on climatic and culturally sensitive approaches to building developed within the International Congresses of Modern Architecture (Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne—CIAM) from the 1950s onward—notions rooted in the hygienic and medical discourses of colonial occupation. → more

●Article
The Extension Buildings of the ADGB Trade Union School in Bernau — Documents of the Formalism Debate in the GDR

The former ADGB Trade Union School is regarded today as an icon of modern architecture. Designed at the Bauhaus under the direction of Hannes Meyer and Hans Wittwer together with the students of architecture, the building ensemble still stands as a paragon of collective work, reform pedagogical ideas and analytic architecture. Less attention has been paid to the extensions to the school, planned 1949–51 by Georg Waterstradt. These buildings stand as a valuable testimony to the vigor of GDR architecture. The “formalism debate” led to a rejection of Bauhaus architecture, and thus, the set of political-architectural principles exemplified by the Trade Union School. → more

●Article
Communistic Functionalist — The Anglophone Reception of Hannes Meyer

Philip Johnson described Hannes Meyer as a “communistic functionalist” whose most notable achievement was to have preceded Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as director of the Bauhaus. The position he assigned to Meyer was reinforced in the Bauhaus Exhibition of 1938 at MoMA. The particular view of the Bauhaus presented at MoMA in 1938 corresponds to the place of Meyer in the historiography of modern architecture in the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s. The view that Meyer’s work allegedly lacked aesthetic interest, rendering it irrelevant to an Anglophone audience. → more

●Article
Selman Selmanagić at the Crossroads of Different Cultures — From Childhood Years in Bosnia to Bauhaus Education and Travels

Selman Selmanagić’s childhood years in Bosnia, on the eve of the First World War, as well as his education in Sarajevo, Ljubljana and at Bauhaus Dessau between the two world wars, together with his work in Palestine and Berlin, shaped his worldview and experience with different cultures and traditions. Throughout his career, he perpetually strove to find contemporary answers for the challenges of the time he was living in. → more

●Article
The “Hungarian Bauhaus” — Sándor Bortnyik’s Bauhaus-Inspired Budapest School Műhely 1928–1938

One of the many Hungarians associated with the Bauhaus, painter and graphic designer Sándor Bortnyik (1893-1976) opened his art and design school, Műhely, in Budapest in 1928 to bring the Bauhaus’s sprit and some of its teaching methods into Hungary. Even if Bortnyik’s school did not have the scope of the Bauhaus, it was an efficient experiment in an independent form of institutionalized education in the field of modern graphic design and typography. → more

●Article
Biology and Educational Models in the Pacific Southern Cone

The Chilean encounter with second-order cybernetics in the early 1970s was an essential part of the modernization project the state had been promoting since the 1920s, a project which also encompasses the 1945 reform of the architecture school. But if one reviews the history of this project with greater care, one can identify the reform of the new art school of 1928, which was the product of a social movement that began after the First World War, and that was able to implement in the main school of art of the country, a “first year of trial” similar to the methodology of the Bauhaus preliminary course, influenced by the trends of the “Active” or “New” school of the time. → more

●Article
For the Faculty of Architecture at METU — Bauhaus was a Promise

“ARCH 101 Basic Design” is the title of the introductory course offered to the first-year students in the METU Faculty of Architecture (Middle East Technical University, Ankara). Since the establishment of the school, this course has been conducted with a very strong Bauhaus impact. → more

●Article
From Social Democratic Experiment to Postwar Avant-Gardism — Asger Jorn and the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus

The project bauhaus imaginista would be negligent if it did not address the artist group referenced by its title, the Mouvement Internationale pour un Bauhaus Imaginiste (International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, or IMIB), founded in 1953 by Danish artist Asger Jorn together with a handful of French and Italian colleagues. Many of the theoretical and artistic positions advocated by the IMIB were developed dialectically in response both to the historical Bauhaus and the reconstitution of a Bauhaus-inspired pedagogical program at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) in Ulm. → more

●Translation
Letter from Asger Jorn to Max Bill — February 12, 1954

Asger Jorn read of Max Bill’s plans for the new Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm (HfG), a school modeled after the Bauhaus, in the British Architects’ Yearbook 1953, where Bill had placed a promotional article to attract prospective students and teachers. Excited by the possibility of participating in a new democratic pedagogical experiment and in pursuing his interest in fusing art and architecture, he wrote to Bill, inquiring about the role of art at Ulm and expressing his desire to secure a teaching position.

This is a translation of one of the letters Jorn send to Bill. → more

+ Add this text to your collection!