A look ahead to the Bauhaus centenary

19.12.2018

The current year hasn’t yet drawn to an end but some blogs and media channels have already virtually finished reporting on the big centenary, which is hotly anticipated by the architecture and design community in 2019. It’s 100 years ago that Walter Gropius signed his contract as director of the legendary Staatliches Bauhaus design hub in Weimar and drafted the passionate Bauhaus manifesto that wanted to remove the dividing line between design as an artist or as a craftsman (“Architects, sculptors, painters – we all must return to craftsmanship”.) In just 14 years, the Bauhaus was situated at three different locations (Weimar, Dessau, Berlin), had three directors (Gropius, Meyer, Mies) and lived under the constant threat of closure by the Nazis who were already in power in the state parliaments and who it couldn’t ultimately elude. Nevertheless, there’s virtually no other school that had such an all-embracing international impact on the design of our environment as the Bauhaus – long after it had ceased to exist.

But what can we expect in the Bauhaus centenary year of 2019?

It will start with an opening festival at the Academy of the Arts in Berlin: the venue on Hanseatenweg will feature a number of rediscovered and restaged performances, concerts, plays, installations and workshops, which have been created especially for the centenary, from 16 to 24 January 2019. In addition to the Bau.Haus.Klang opening concert, some of the highlights will definitely be performances of the Triadic Ballet by Oskar Schlemmer or the Licht. Schatten. Spuren installation with work by Lászlo Mohholy-Nagy and Christian Boltansky and others. To find the full programme click here.

The finale of the bauhaus imaginista: Still Undead research and exhibition project, which examines the international ties of the Bauhaus, will take place in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin from 15 March to 10 June.

And by April at the latest it’ll be worth taking a detour to Krefeld: this is where the association MiK Mies in Krefeld will be curating the state of North-Rhine Westphalia’s contribution entitled map 2019 – Bauhaus – Netzwerk – Krefeld. A research and exhibition project under the aegis of the granddaughter (Christiane Lange) of the industrialist and Mies client Hermann Lange will place the links between art, the (silk) industry and Bauhaus lecturers at centre stage. The results will be showcased in a pavilion created by Düsseldorf artist Thomas Schütte from April onwards. From June, an interactive app will provide information on the time prominent Bauhaus exponents spent in Krefeld.

The Bauhaus Archive / Museum of Design’s centenary exhibition entitled original Bauhaus will run in Berlin from 6 September 2019 to 27 January 2020. However, it will take place in the Berlinische Galerie because the Bauhaus Archive’s building, designed by Walter Gropius himself, will still be undergoing redevelopment.

An architectural highlight of the Bauhaus centenary in 2019 will be the opening of the new Bauhaus museum in Dessau on 8 September based on plans by addenda architects from Spain (González Hinz Zabala, Barcelona). This will show the collection of the Bauhaus Foundation Dessau in its entirety for the first time; as a contemporary location, the new museum is also to serve as a link to the Bauhaus buildings in Dessau.

Since the second generation of entrepreneurs took over in 1946, Wilkhahn has also perceived itself as being in the tradition of the Bauhaus and spent many years working with Bauhaus players and their successors like Herbert Hirche or Georg Leowald. We’ll be joining in with the Bauhaus year with all sorts of events. A symposium on the legacy of the Bauhaus is one of the items on the agenda.

So we’d now like to say goodbye until January 2019 and wish you a happy Christmas.

The new (Bauhaus) year has plenty in store.

Your Wilkhahn editorial team

 

 

Click here to see the entire Bauhaus centenary programme.

Click here to read more about the opening festival at the Academy of the Arts Berlin.

Click here for more about the bauhaus imaginista exhibition.

Click here for more about the map 2019 project by the Mies association in Krefeld MiK.

Click here for more about the original bauhaus exhibition by the Bauhaus Archive in the Berlinische Galerie.

Click here for more about the opening of the new Bauhaus museum in Dessau.

 

Following the Bauhaus tradition: click here for more about Wilkhahn’s corporate history and philosophy.

 

 

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