bauhaus
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Translation

The Moscow Bauhaus Exhibition Catalogue (1931)

Cover by Max Gebhard (1930) for the exhibition catalogue
"Bauhaus Dessau. Period of Hannes Meyer’s directorship. 1928-1930",
Moscow 1931.

When Hannes Meyer had emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1930, one of the first things he did was giving several talks at the Higher Institute for Architecture and Building (VASI) and organizing a small exhibition about "his" Bauhaus that was only shown for one week. The idea of a larger exhibition was supported (or perhaps even suggested) by the VOKS, the All-union Society for cultural relations with foreign countries. 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.

For an in-depth analysis of these Bauhaus exhibitions please read Tatiana Efrussi's article "After the Ball: Hannes Meyer presenting the Bauhaus in Moscow".

HANNES MEYER

The present exhibition documents the Third Period of the Bauhaus movement when an attempt was made to reconstitute this institute as a “Red Bauhaus”—a Marxist architectural school.

We offer a brief historical account of Bauhaus to put this into context.

In 1919 in Weimar (Thuringia), Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus as a pilot institution to promote the work of artists in industry. He succeeded in bringing together a group of artists, sculptors, and architects. Modernists of all currents provided assistance. Among them were Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Schlemmer, Johannes Itten, Paul Klee, Georg Muche, László Moholy-Nagy, and Adolf Meyer.

The city of Weimar provided its School of Applied Arts for this experiment. The group of artists increased by another 70–100 students. The fact that the artistic leadership at that time was concentrated in the hands of the easel painters is no coincidence. They could fulfil their individual creativity in easel painting and murals and had little difficulty in obtaining materials and labour power. They injected these works of an abstract and illusory world into reality, and, as anarchists, were astounded to discover the impact of their individualistic creations, which found approval from collectors and gained the admiration of innovators but were dismissed by the masses.

In 1923 the first Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar assembled together the results of this first experimental period. Bauhaus became the international centre of modernism in art and architecture. A year later the institute was forced to move from Weimar to Dessau due to political pressure from the new Thuringian government.

The city of Dessau, the capital of the Free State of Anhalt, is located in the centre of the triangle of Halle, Leipzig, and Magdeburg. Numbering 80,000 inhabitants, it was the citadel of social democracy. Thanks to the “Junkers” aircraft factory located there it gained global renown. Dessau offered Walter Gropius the opportunity to build a vast amount of new buildings for the institute as well as apartments for professors. From 1925 the city also offered an annual production subsidy of 125,000 marks. Later, Gropius would receive an order for the construction of the Dessau-Törten housing estate. The Bauhaus workshops had significant orders from the city for woodwork, mural paintings, metalwork, printing, and textiles.

The Bauhaus theatre, under the direction of Oskar Schlemmer, adapted design theories to the stage.

In December 1926, at the opening celebrations of Bauhaus, there was an international gathering of about three hundred guests. The formal position of the institute now seemed firmly established.

This second period of the Bauhaus movement (1925–27) was characterized by the leading role that architecture played, shifting the position that neoclassicism held in its building and interior design. An exaggerated emphasis on the cube, the rectangle and the use of primary colours in construction and in its facilities created a particular “Bauhaus style”. As an experiment, this new artistic creation in the world of production was of fundamental interest. Subsequently, this “Bauhaus Style”, made popular thanks to advertising and mechanical imitation, had a somewhat baleful influence on German architecture in its final years. It was indicative that the output of Bauhaus workshops was acquired by collectors and museums, and the renowned “Bauhaus books” went on to become the primers for aestheticizing snobs. At that time the institute had 160 students. “The Society of Friends of Bauhaus”, with its own journal entitled bauhaus became the international vehicle of the Bauhaus movement. The interest in Bauhaus from bourgeois circles and the artistic intelligentsia remained unchanged. Dessau became a site of modernist pilgrimage.

In the beginning of 1928 Gropius gave up his leadership post in the institute, a post transferred to Hannes Meyer. Bauhaus entered the third phase of its development. Hannes Meyer in the following two and a half years tried to orientate the institute away from an artistic, and towards a more sociological, ethos. The production of the Bauhaus workshops also changed: in place of the luxury implements there was an emphasis on production for the standard needs of the masses. Separate Bauhaus workshops amalgamated into production cells and students were attracted by the self-government of the institute. The output of the workshops augmented in two years from 128,000 marks to 240,000 marks. In the last business year of 1929–30 the studios were allocated 32,000 marks for the salaries of the students working in industry. In the spring of 1930 the students were able to build 90 workers’ apartments for the city of Dessau. At about that time proletarian student cadres and Marxist-oriented visiting teachers were attracted to the institute. The reconstitution of Bauhaus was achieved with the aid of groups of students close to the German Communist Party and against the tacit opposition of the professors and art scholars.

However, the growth of the Communist movement among those studying at Bauhaus troubled the government so much that the city authorities of Dessau decided to take corrective action. During the term holidays at Bauhaus, its director Hannes Meyer was fired and his successor, Mies van der Rohe, was appointed. Repressive measures were taken to stem the students’ revolutionary mood and some foreigners were deported from the country. The new statute derogated all the rights that the students had once had. Fascist reaction had overwhelmed Bauhaus.

Our experience in Bauhaus Dessau showed that “Red Bauhaus” as an educational institute was infeasible under capitalist conditions. Basing themselves on this conclusion, Hannes Meyer and a group of his colleagues from Bauhaus made themselves available to the Soviet Union for socialist construction.

Aerial view of the Trade Union School in Bernau near Berlin, 1929–30. 

ARKADIJ MORDVINOV

THE BAUHAUS EXHIBITION IN MOSCOW

The content of the current exhibition highlights the work of the German Bauhaus School (literally “building house”) in Dessau, under the leadership of Hannes Meyer from 1928 until the final events there. In addition to works executed by the student collective are several personal works by Hannes Meyer created with student participation.

The Bauhaus exhibition is of great significance for us. On the one hand, it is a record of Bauhaus’s final period, whereas on the other it reflects the leading trends and contradictions of capitalist Germany, including the formation of proletarian art in its core, emerging in irreconcilable contradiction to the ruling bourgeois ideology.

Bauhaus reflected the main artistic trends of recent decades.

In its first phase of development during its time in Weimar, Bauhaus was characterized by the dominance of the brushwork of easel painters. From the artist’s easel they move on to “objects” in which they found the synthesis of arts. Insofar as they see each artistic form as a pure form (painting—colour, surface; sculpture—volume; architecture—space) the synthesis of painting, sculpture, architecture, and objects was in a formal sense abstract and thus beyond the scope of art.

In its second period a thoroughgoing formalistic “thingism” is dominant in Bauhaus. Instead of paintings we have the painting of murals, photomontage and graphics; instead of sculpture we have the production of furniture from wood and metal. In this field Bauhaus breaks with its previous eclectic architecture, ornamental, imitative style, and its attempt to restore ancient styles. Instead it takes the path of creating a new architecture. Just like in its production of objects, so in architecture, there existed two schools of thought and work methods in Bauhaus: the formalist constructivism under Walter Gropius predominating in the second Bauhaus period; in the third period, under Hannes Meyer, it is replaced by functionalism and an engineering focus.

The school of Walter Gropius aestheticizes the technical whereas the school of Hannes Meyer brings it into a sharp focus and negates any aestheticism.

The former was committed to the creation of new forms in architecture and objects based on technical means and materials and to their formal expression in terms of simple geometric measurements.

The latter dismissed formal considerations, obtaining solutions corresponding with the simple function of objects in terms of their functional feasibility.

The school of Walter Gropius came laden with the influence of cubo-suprematism, formalism in art, whereas the school of Hannes Meyer replaces this with science and technology.

Compare the elegant residential houses of Törten, the mansions and the building of the Bauhaus in Dessau (the work of Walter Gropius) with the works of Hannes Meyer—his extensions of the residential houses in Törten and the school in Bernau where all is motivated solely by a consistent functionalism: the material whose extent and articulation is not engendered by aesthetic considerations but dictated by a directly functional use and by the rationality of its design.

The difference between these two schools emerges dramatically in other spheres too.

The textiles and furniture of the Gropius school were permeated with a quest for colour, texture, positive ingenuity, and refined expression without excessive ornamentation and aimed at acquiring aesthetic influence.

The textiles and furniture of Hannes Meyer are defined by their functional and technical significance alone. The cup, a work of the Gropius school, where the glass is covered by a metal belt connected to a wooden handle, where undivided attention has been paid to the ingenuous design and the display of textural properties of many different materials (glass, wood, metal) and their formal expression. Hannes Meyer responds with a simple glass cup intended for its main purpose.

The Gropius school delivered aestheticized and formally refined products (but ones with no clear application), more often than not representing luxury objects destined for patrons of the arts, museums, and bourgeois aesthetes. The school of Hannes Meyer aimed to create products which were of maximum economy, feasible for wider consumption and the working masses.

This social aspect acquired its main development neither in architecture nor in the manufacture of objects but in giving a combative proletarian content to mass and versatile forms of artistic and ideological propaganda (posters, photo montages, journal, book, and brochure design).

In this field we already see a reversal of formalism, a technicism, a rejection of art towards an art of proletarian content.

This change of course had still not embraced the spheres of fresco painting, monumental sculpture, the design of mass worker festivals and demonstrations and had no impact on architecture. In capitalist conditions this was either difficult (in terms of frescoes or monumental sculpture) or completely unworkable (architecture).

This shift in Bauhaus towards an art replete with agitational content, was associated with a sharpening of the class struggle in Germany and the expansion of the Communist movement within Bauhaus itself. The student collective in Bauhaus was international in composition. Here there were Germans, Swiss, Hungarians, Poles, and so on. It was comprised in the main of a petty bourgeois, technical intelligentsia, rebellious, innovative in art and anarchist in spirit. A rather powerful communist cell influenced and directed the radicalism and rebelliousness intrinsic to Bauhaus towards proletarian goals. On the other hand, the acute contradictions in contemporary Germany could not fail to affect the technical intelligentsia.

A section of it, its most sensitive and advanced sector, unavoidably came to the conclusion, given the interests of their specialism, that any genuine development of their specialism was unthinkable in the conditions of a capitalist system.

Many architects working on city planning, or on the redevelopment of old cities, were faced with the reality that their projects were unrealizable in the conditions of private property.

Only the socialist system, a planned economy, gives unprecedented scope for the work of architects and city planners.

The huge planning work and construction of socialist cities in the USSR once more confirms this fact.

All of this and the fact that Bauhaus in the sphere of graphics provided a series of posters, journal and book covers for the German Communist Party, thus entering the arena of open class struggle on the side of the proletariat, led to the crushing of Bauhaus.

The Social-Democratic city authorities in Dessau removed Hannes Meyer from his post as director of Bauhaus, conducted police searches in the institute, and deported foreign student leaders from Germany.

Hannes Meyer, addressing protest meetings in Dessau and in Moscow, declared that no genuine development of science and technology is possible under the conditions of a capitalist system and that scientific figures could work only in league with the proletariat, building socialism under the leadership of the Communist Party.

The crushing of Bauhaus provoked a wave of protests from Soviet architects, artists, and student collectives.

At the protest meetings in the Architectural, Forest Technical, Printing Arts Institutes, in the gatherings of professors, students, and cultural figures, resolutions were carried applauding the revolutionary student collectives of the Bauhaus and the courageous intervention of Hannes Meyer and shaming the Social-Democratic council of Dessau.

Hannes Meyer and the group of architects from Bauhaus—Béla Scheffler, Antonín Urban, Tibor Weiner, René Mensch, Klaus Meumann, Philipp Tolziner, and Konrad Püschel—now work in Moscow. They have formed a shock architecture brigade entitled the “Red Front”.

Hannes Meyer also works as a professor in the Moscow Advanced School for Architecture (the WASI).

What is valuable for us in the works of Hannes Meyer’s architectural school?

Firstly, his scientific method for designing architectural works.

Design is based on an in-depth preliminary study of production processes taking place at the site, as well as their connections and functions. Based upon an analysis of the major factors (of a physical and psycho-physiological character) a solution is found to ensure the proper functioning of the designed building.

The analytical results are recorded in graphics, diagrams, becoming visual aids for further work for designers in blueprints for separate premises in relation to lighting, exposure to sunlight, furniture arrangement, and so on.

All canonic and preconceived schemas and formulae are cast aside, and each detail is brought into consideration with the aid of the latest scientific and technical data.

Secondly, this improved method both in the sphere of design as well as in that of production is encountered everywhere even in the standardization and classification of the blueprints themselves.

And thirdly, this is a system of architectural education: the Bauhaus students of all the courses together with the professors conduct the design and construction of the building.

By working on a real project and its implementation, the student combines his study with production work in all stages of construction. Besides, younger students study with the older ones, who, studying with the professors at the same time, aid them with their teaching of the younger students.

Such a vertical system of collective work and study, based on real tasks and production and covering all courses, undoubtedly gives positive results.

Under capitalist conditions this system is completely infeasible. In our Soviet conditions it is fully workable and necessary. One should use the experience of Bauhaus in our construction colleges.

While not ignoring a vast array of other valuable features of the school of Hannes Meyer, one should note that, along with the many positive sides of its theories and systems of work, there are also negative aspects which still need to be overcome. We should point here to the lack of consideration to the social and ideological content of architecture. In particular the elimination from architecture of artistic considerations, the mechanical method, and the reduction of the role and the aims of the architectural structure to serving the simplest of functions.

This all presents an obstacle to the establishment of a genuinely proletarian architecture built upon the promotion of the class content of architecture and on the dialectical scope of all sides, including that of its artistic features.

In proletarian architecture, technique and art must form a dialectical unity. Let’s hope that in Soviet conditions the negative features of Hannes Meyer and his group will be overcome.

Finally, it is extremely valuable for us that Hannes Meyer and his comrades have come to the USSR, not merely as specialists, but as people aware of the impossibility of scientific and technical development in capitalist conditions, and consciously giving their labour to the cause of the working class. Hannes Meyer and his comrades have joined together with proletarian specialists and joined the ranks of the Soviet working class, this shock brigade of the global proletariat for the construction of socialism throughout the world.

Exhibition "The Bauhaus in Dessau under the direction of Hannes Meyer, 1928–30" at the State Museum of New Western Art in Moscow, 1931, Plates 1–20 showing a photo series and competition plans of the Trade Union School in Bernau.

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE

ARCHITECTURE, FURNITURE, GRAPHICS AND PHOTOS.

1-22 Trade Union School in Bernau

1 Easterly view from the woods. Site plan

2 Street, entrance, and main building

3 Main entrance and northern yard

4 Glass corridor: interior and exterior details

5 Large auditorium

6 Canteen and view from the canteen

7 Canteen and veranda

8 Residential building. General view and detail

9 Living room and corridor of dwelling unit

10 External corridor from below. Exterior view

11 Library and footbath

12 Newspaper corner and entrance to the library

13 Auditorium from the interior and external view

14 School building. General view. Sports hall interior

15 Premise for seminar classes. School class

16 Professors’ house. General view and details

17 Residential building and professors’ house

18 View from the woods and southern view across the field

19 View from the woods (western and northern sides)

20 Competition plans

21 Wallpaper fabrics for the large auditorium

22 Metallic folding chair

23 Standard table with lamp

24 Worktable for conveyor work

25 Wardrobe. Tables and chairs

26 Kitchen table ME 102

27 Suchard store. Leipzig

28 Stolp. (Słupsk) Oberammergau Poster

29 Construction exercises. Solar chart. Study Giesenschlag

30 Construction exercises. Study by Mentone and Meumann

31 Construction exercises. Study of a fishermen colony by Wasserman-Knaup

32 Construction exercises. Study of a garden Knaup. Study by Giesenschlag

33 Tolziner and Weiner. Dormitory accommodation

34 School, Urban

35 90 workers’ apartments in Törten

36 90 workers’ apartments in Törten

37 90 workers’ apartments in Törten

38 Menzel and Gebhard. 3 Brochure covers

39 Menzel and Gebhard. 3 Brochure covers

40 RED (Czech journal) Bauhaus Number

41 Jungmittag. Photo reportage. Bernau

42 Jungmittag. Photo reportage. Bernau

43 Amateur photographs

44 5 amateur photographic works

45 Bauhaus Avenue

46 Bauhaus Avenue

47 Bauhaus publications. Tagebuch, Roter Student, Pravda

Aufsatz Menzel

48 Bauhaus 3 and Bauhaus 4 Open Letter in Russian translation

49 Political Printing Press. Menzel and Gebhard

50 AIZ (Workers’ Illustrated Paper) Bauhaus Number

Exhibition "The Bauhaus in Dessau under the direction of Hannes Meyer, 1928–30" at the State Museum of New Western Art in Moscow, 1931, Plates 22–27 and 37–39, 45, 46, 49.

COLLECTION OF FUNCTIONAL AND DECORATIVE FABRICS

WEAVING WORKSHOP BAUHAUS DESSAU

Director Gunta Sharon-Stölzl

A. FUNCTIONAL FABRICS

№ № 151, 111, 113 Fabrics from iron threads for metal furniture. These fabrics should support the weight of a human body. They are easily washed and do not gather dust.

№№ 166, 167, 169 “Cellophane”—material for wall padding.

It reflects the light well, withstands disinfection, does not gather dust, is not combustible.

№ 172 Fabrics for wall padding for the auditorium of the Trade Union School (ADGB) in Bernau. On the right the padding, of cellulose threads, reflects the light and does not gather dust. The left (of chenille) is for acoustic absorption and thermal isolation.

№№ 177, 156, 127, 420 Fabrics for furniture upholstery. Gather neither dirt nor dust. Easy to clean, with strong resistant qualities.

№ 8а Curtain fabrics. Grey colour filter.

№ 185 Curtain fabrics. Red colour filter.

B. DECORATIVE FABRICS

№ 32 Curtain fabrics.

№ № 15, 23 Fabrics for armchair covers.

№ № 104, 22, 146, 19, 97 Fabrics for furniture upholstery in a decorative arrangement, comprising of various fabrics (wool, paper, artificial silk).

WEAVING WORKSHOP. DESSAU 1930

Otti Berger. Standard blanket for the Trade Union School in Bernau. Fabric: Artificial Silk.

Lena Bergner. Graduated from the weaving department of Bauhaus 1926-1928, presently technical director of the East Prussian Weaving Workshop in Königsberg.

№ № 1, 6 Functional furniture fabrics.

№ № 7, 8, 9 Decorative furniture fabrics for upholstery.

№ № 10, 11 Decorative fabrics for clothes.

№ № 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 Fabrics for tablecloths and blankets.

№ № 17, 18, 19, 20 Fragments of decorative wall carpets.

COLLECTION OF WALLPAPERS

BAUHAUS DESSAU 1929-1930

Wallpaper should be considered as an object of mass consumption. In an agreement with the “Rasch Brothers” company (from Bramsche, near Osnabrück), Bauhaus attempted to launch this series of cheap, popular wallpaper on the market. At retail one roll of wallpaper costs from 35 pfennigs to 1.10 marks.

The surface structure of this wallpaper is produced to make it resistant to any stains or dirt. The paint is developed on common principles of harmony so that irrespective of the choice of the inexperienced purchaser all the hues of the paint will automatically be in harmony with separate neighbouring rooms.

The paper and the paint technology used ensure that the wallpaper can be disinfected.

In the launch year (1929-30) of these wallpapers 4,000 apartments were lined with them in Germany.

The wallpaper was so cheap that in some locations the association of wallpaper traders refused to permit its sale since corresponding goods were 50% more expensive.

POLITICAL POSTERS AGAINST THE TERROR IN BAUHAUS

Erich Borchert. Graduated from Bauhaus and currently works in the Malyarstroy Association in Moscow.

Technikum Printers

Moscow

Glavlit Street

№ 5080

Circulation 1,100

Cover photo: Election poster.

Communist Workers’ Party

Menzel. 1930

Translation from Russian into English by Giuliano Vivaldi​.

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●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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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“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

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The “School in the Woods” as a Socio-pedagogical Ideal — Functional Analyses and Photographs by Peterhans

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. Walter Peterhans’ photographs of the school images illustrate both the architect’s intentions for the building and the environmental studies conducted by Bauhaus students. → more

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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