Masters and weavers
In this Bauhaus centenary, one often gets the impression that this laboratory of modernism was a trailblazer for pretty much everything. Its combination of industry, art and craft, its teaching methods, publications, the notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk... And last but not least, a holistic understanding of aesthetics, which many architects still value today as their personal guiding principle.
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.
