Bauhaus/Architecture: Reception, Migration, Critique

There is not the one Bauhaus. Even less is determinable, what Bauhaus Architecture means. Founded 1919 in Weimar, the Bauhaus already moved to Dessau in 1925, just to move again, only a few years later, to Berlin, where it was dissolved after the Nazis seized power. After the war, multiple successor institutions and groups, also outside of Germany, referred to the Bauhaus. Former Bauhaus Masters and students had significant influence on the spread of the „Neue Bauen“ (New Building) in the U.S. and in Israel. However subsequently, answering the question “what is the Bauhaus” didn’t become easier. This is even more so true, for attempts to define “Bauhaus” as an architectural style, which to this day causes more irritation than specification. In parallel, a critical retrospective of the Bauhaus inheritance had already begun in different international contexts. Aspects of reception and migration are therefore de-cisive for any discourse on the phenomenon.

The CCSA Bauhaus Lecture Series is conceived as a commentary to the Bauhaus 100th anniversary. In fourteen lectures and talks, the reception, migration and critique of the Bauhaus and its architecture are presented through a critical perspective.

The first seven lectures including Werner Durth, Daniela Fabricius, Thomas Flierl, Reto Geiser, Ita Heinze-Greenberg, Rixt Hoekstra, Kathleen James-Chakraborty, Carsten Ruhl, Frederic Schwartz and Daniel Talesnik have been recorded and are available on our website http://criticalarchitecture.org.

All lectures take place in the auditorium of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt am Main and have been supported by the Hessisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst.

They are open to the public, and aim to draw the general interested public, in addition to expert audiences and students of architecture and art history. The organisers are aiming for a lively discussion on the topicality of the Bauhaus and its meaning for society today.

The Center for Critical Studies in Architecture (CCSA) is a research cluster of the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main (Art History Department), the Technische Universität Darmstadt (Architecture Department) and the Deutsches Architekturmuseum.


Program:

April 16, 2019
Hilde Heynen (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
»Time’s up for the Bauhaus? Reconsidering a Legacy«

May 14, 2019
Bruno Maurer (gta Archives/ETH Zürich)
»Interdependenzen. Giedion, Gropius und das CIAM-Netzwerk«

May 28, 2019
Torsten Lange (ETH Zürich) & Michael Osman (University of California, Los Angeles)
»Appropriating Modernism: From the Office to the State«

June 4, 2019
Karen Koehler (Hampshire College, Amherst)
»Walter Gropius Comes and Goes«

June 11, 2019
Anke Blümm (Bauhaus-Museum, Klassik Stiftung Weimar)
»Architektur – Bauhaus – Weimar«

June 18, 2019
Jan de Vylder (architecten de vylder vinck taillieu, Gent), Verena von Beckerath (Heide & von Beckerath, Berlin) and Elli Mosayebi (Edelaar Mosayebi Inderbitzin Architekten, Zürich)
»Challenging the Bauhaus Today. A Conversation with Architects«

June 25, 2019
Maristella Casciato (The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles)
»Bauhaus on Display. From the Getty Research Institute Collections«


The full program can be accessed here <http://criticalarchitecture.org>.