Plastics in the Bauhaus: Preserving Modernism
Conservators at the Bauhaus Dessau do not only handle steel, glass, or concrete, but also plastics such as Triolin. How far are they willing to let plastics show their age? And what does the centenary imply for future conservation work?
The Bauhaus Perspective on Green Spaces
The Bauhaus shifted perspectives further afield. Modernism turned familiar perforated façades into glass envelopes – thereby providing an unobstructed view of the outside world. What role does the outdoors play in the Bauhaus? What is its understanding of the countryside and green areas we live in? And how does the Bauhaus period inspire the design of open spaces today?
“Everything had to be reconsidered.”
The Gutenberg Museum in Mainz presents the special exhibition “ABC. Avant-garde – Bauhaus – Corporate Design”, documenting Bauhaus typography that revolutionised graphic and communication design and remains globally influential to this day. We took the opportunity to talk to the font designer Erik Spiekermann. Together with typographical experts and students, he has completed and continued to develop classic fragmentary fonts by several Bauhaus masters.
What Does the New Woman Need?
100 Years of Loheland colony. The Loheland colony in the foothills of the Rhön mountains was seen in the Weimar Republic as a provocation: here, women were empowered through gymnastics training to live self-determined lives. Like the Bauhaus, Loheland is also celebrating its hundredth anniversary this year. Elisabeth Mollenhauer-Klüber, together with Michael Siebenbrodt, has curated the anniversary exhibition in Vonderau Museum and explain what the emancipatory project was all about.
Modernistic Idyll in a Deteriorating City
The foundation stone for Lafayette Park was laid in Detroit on 22 November 1956. It was here that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Ludwig Hilberseimer turned their ideas of flowing space and a New City into reality. Today the former industrial metropolis is the iconic image of a shrinking city – and Lafayette Park is an island in the middle of the eroding city.
Bauhaus Buildings Dessau: Originals retold
The Bauhaus intended to develop new forms of housing and living. This was represented by the Studio Building, designed as a collective dwelling house: 28 studio apartments for students and junior masters, equipped with built-in cupboards and tubular steel furniture, tea kitchens on every floor, a roof terrace, a canteen in the ground floor, bathrooms in the basement, and balconies. The balconies were particularly popular: they were an excellent motif for photographies of the house and its residents. Once 14 people fitted on one of the small balconies!
