Editors: Ana Tostões
Guest editors: Michel Melenhorst
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Architectural education, Reuse, Bauhaus.
The Bauhaus had a pioneering influence on design worldwide which still endures today; through education, experimentation and materialization, a revolution took place in architecture, urbanism and design for mass production. In 1918, during the immediate post-war period, Walter Gropius (1883-1969) achieved a fusion between the Kunstgewerbeschule and the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst in Weimar, with the creation of an interdisciplinary school of design and crafts. In April 1919, he was elected director of the school which was by then called the Staatliches Bauhaus. He also published the Bauhaus Manifesto, which remains as a pioneering moment in history, with irreversible consequences at a global scale. The Bauhaus as a school, as a method of experimentation, education, and research, embodies the idea of science applied in service of the society. At the Bauhaus, utopia was combined with pragmatism, agitation and propaganda with public service, poetry with utility, Neue Sachlichkeit with creation and freedom. Its premises continue to be relevant today with the great issues of sustainability and democracy needing to be addressed through art and technology.
Published:
2019-11-01
Editorial
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The Bauhaus had a pioneering influence on design worldwide which still endures today; through education, experimentation and materialization, a revolution took place in architecture, urbanism and design for mass production. In 1918, during the immediate post-war period, Walter Gropius (1883-1969) achieved a fusion between the Kunstgewerbeschule and the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst in Weimar, with the creation of an interdisciplinary school of design and crafts. In April 1919, he was elected director of the school which was by then called the Staatliches Bauhaus. He also published the...
Introduction
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In his keynote lecture “When the oppressive new and the vulnerable old meet”, at the 13th docomomo Conference in Seoul 2014, Hubert-Jan Henket (1940–) made a passionate plea for “Sustainable Modernity”. In docomomo Journal 52, an invitation to join this plea was published. Hubert-Jan Henket also spoke of a wish to change the curricula at all schools of architecture and include the history of modernity as well as the conservation and adaptive reuse of what is there already as a standard part of the education. Since then, and even before 2014, a lot has happened in exploring the further...
Essays
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On the occasion of the exhibition which I co-curated at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) with Leah Dickerman in 2009 for the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus (and the 80th anniversary of the founding of the museum), I delved into the museum’s archives to shed light on the political context as well as the complex logistics of the museum’s earlier Bauhaus exhibition staged in 1938. The museum’s 1938 book that accompanied that important episode in the early reception of the Bauhaus in America remained the standard work on the school and its art philosophy in the English...
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This essay evaluates the legacy of the pedagogical model set by Walter Gropius and other founders of the Bauhaus on subsequent curricula for schools of architecture. More specifically, it uses Walter Gropius’ views on history as a backdrop for a closer reading of operative history. While at the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius did not initially mandate the teaching of history. Later, as Dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, he re-structured the history sequence as electives, thereby undermining its hitherto central role in what he viewed as a traditional approach to pedagogy that was...
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In the early 1930s, Modernism became the normative style of architecture in Tel Aviv. This was due to the architects who operated in Tel Aviv, from all over Europe, including architects who studied at the Bauhaus. This essay will discuss how Modernist Tel Aviv evolved from the “White City” (UNESCO World Heritage Site) to the “Bauhaus City”, and how these myths, constantly being reinvented, have contributed to the city’s resilience, which has enabled urban and architectural conservation.
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Aldo van Eyck design experiences engendered the development of broader architectural concepts, many of which he further developed in his writings. Aldo van Eyck used various forums to attack an impoverished functionalism that was devoid of qualities such as ambiguity and reversibility. In the history of architecture, it is rare for architects to reflect on their own work, but design and research, writing and building were intrinsic to Aldo van Eyck. He kept on looking for a formal vocabulary to bring the multiple and the general into order and harmony through his architectural...
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The importance of Bauhaus to Lina Bo Bardi is herein analyzed from two perspectives. One that follows her trajectory from the industrial design course she taught at MASP to its critique, searching in the Brazilian Northeastern popular culture for sources of renewal. The second one focuses on the project of adapting a factory to be used as a leisure center in São Paulo. In addition to valuing the rationality of the factory architecture built in the first phase of Brazilian industrialization, its preservation encompassed, in order for the building to be used for leisure purposes,...
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The essay is part of an ongoing research work about the heritage of modernism, especially the relationship between material, information and message — projected on the genesis of values and a cultural practice of modern reuse, not least on our present legacy and an upcoming circular society. It examines narratives and developments of modernism, concerning the built environment and industry production, to question modern general principles, systems of values and socio-cultural interrelations. The examination is experimentally grounded on projects both in experimental architecture and...
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More than a decade ago the TSAM addressed the question of teaching the preservation of modern and contemporary buildings as a new discipline, specifically and radically different from that of new architecture, both in terms of theoretical courses and the contemporary architecture project. It has established a methodology and a practice based on its research that embrace the whole of polytechnic or university education, whether basic or advanced. Finally, the TSAM affirms the richness and the educational power of preservation and its project, and, beyond the subjective feelings and...
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The Section for Heritage and Architecture of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the Delft University of Technology specializes in architectural education for adaptive reuse of heritage buildings, with a specific focus on the built heritage of the 20th century. Our approach combines architectural design and technological knowledge with an approach that places values as central informants. Here we present our approach, explore the past and project a future evolution of our educational methodology. Finally, we reflect on the lasting relevance of the tangible and...
Documentation Issues
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Historians have always assumed that Walter Gropius (1883-1969) invented the name Das Bauhaus (somewhat inadequately translated as ‘house for building’) for the school he founded in Weimar in 1919. Often, critics have noted the brilliance of this “unique creation”, as it announced the radical change from the “Grand Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts” to a new institution that was going to be more accessible, grounded and humble. It promised both a new beginning and a connection to builders’ guilds of the medieval past. However, when Walter Gropius founded his school in April 1919, a...
Interviews
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On the 4th March 2019, at his Berlin Office, DJ (Ana Tostões, editor, and Michel Melenhorst, guest editor) interviewed David Chipperfield, an internationally renowned architect, founder of David Chipperfield Architects (1985) whose work is recognized with important awards such as the RIBA Stirling Prize, the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture (Mies van der Rohe Award) and the Deutscher Architekturpreis.
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On the 27th August 2019, at his Amsterdam office, DJ (Ana Tostões, editor, and Michel Melenhorst, guest editor) interviewed Wiel Arets, an internationally renowned architect, and the founder of Wiel Arets Architects (1983). He has since taught at several universities worldwide, having also been Dean of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam (1995–2001) and Dean of the College of Architecture (CoA) at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago (2012–2017).
News
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From 6 to 9 September 2016, the major event concerning the discussion on the reuse of Modern Movement buildings and sites occurred in Lisbon: the 14th International docomomo Conference. More than 500 people from five continents came together, around keynote and paper sessions, round-tables, tours and workshops, to discuss the subject “Adaptive reuse. The Modern Movement towards the future”. It not only gave rise to the most up-to-date scientific result on the topic – the homonymous proceedings –, as many other strengths and initiatives were driven from that moment on. The research...
