In 2009 there will be a lot of events celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Bauhaus. In what respect is your project »Bauhaus twenty-21: An Ongoing Legacy«unique and what was your premise?
The thing that impressed me the most in my work on the project was how the Bauhaus tried to develop solutions to the outstanding issues of their time. What I have tried to achieve with it is to offer a contemporary perspective on Bauhaus architecture and design. I want to show the evolution of some of the design solutions that were conceived by the Bauhaus 90 years ago and how they manifest themselves in 21st Century architecture both visually and through the voice of contemporary practitioners.
A lot of people still associate the Bauhaus with a specific aesthetic (white cube, flat roof...); however looking at your project, the connection between the Bauhaus buildings and the 21st century examples is sometimes far from being obvious.
When I first visited Dessau in the late 90’s that is exactly what I thought. I knew the furniture, Mies van der Rohe’s German Pavilion in Barcelona and the Villa Tugendhat, as well as Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus building is Dessau. However when I saw the Törten Estate, the Employment Office and the Steel Haus (all located in Dessau as well) I quickly realized that while there is a certain consistency in the aesthetic of a majority of the buildings, the primary goal of Bauhaus architecture was to come up with design solutions for the problems of the early 20st Century. To me the contemporary pairings with each of these buildings is equally inspiring. Graham Phillips’ Skywood House has taken Mies’ early ideas concerning simplicity of design as well as incorporating water in architecture, all the while blurring the boundaries between manmade architecture and nature. Mies’ Villa Tugendhat used the latest technology available to achieve a similar result, Werner Sobek has taken these ideas to a whole new level with his house R128. Walter Gropius dealt with a financial crisis and food shortages with his designs for the Törten Estate, today Rolf Disch demonstrates to us how to deal with the current need for alternative energy sources in his pre-fabricated plus energy houses in the Solar Estate. Hanno Vogl-Fernheim, like Walter Gropius more than 80 years ago, uses new ideas for social architecture in his employment office. Sauerbruch Hutton’s German Environmental Agency shows us their vision for the future much the same as Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus Building less than one mile from the original building in Dessau. With few exceptions these are not aesthetic pairings but theoretical ones that demonstrate the evolution of a specific set of ideas.
Do you feel that looking back at the achievements of the Bauhaus in the field of architecture and design can teach/tell us something about the way practitioners should view their role today?
When you scratch beneath the surface aesthetic of the 12 historical buildings in the project you realize that these designs were reactions to financial crisis, food shortages and disease that effected Germany in the early 20th Century in the aftermath of WWI. It is uncanny that we are facing similar problems 90 years later; we need to come up with the solutions for our »new« century. I hope the contemporary selections in the project will demonstrate that people are thinking about these solutions. However these are just the start of the conversation we need to be having; we need to keep pushing to find new technologies and design solutions that will be the building blocks of design and architecture in the 22nd Century.
In the book published alongside the exhibition you mention your great passion for design. Who are you most inspired by? Photographers, designers, architects?
I have a wide range of influences: I was convinced to think about a career as a photographer after seeing the amazing images of Horst P. Horst. I am also influenced by the art of Ruscha, Hopper and Wyeth. Furniture from not only the Bauhaus but George Nelson and Charles and Ray Eames, and modernist architecture and design in general.
The thing that impressed me the most in my work on the project was how the Bauhaus tried to develop solutions to the outstanding issues of their time. What I have tried to achieve with it is to offer a contemporary perspective on Bauhaus architecture and design. I want to show the evolution of some of the design solutions that were conceived by the Bauhaus 90 years ago and how they manifest themselves in 21st Century architecture both visually and through the voice of contemporary practitioners.
A lot of people still associate the Bauhaus with a specific aesthetic (white cube, flat roof...); however looking at your project, the connection between the Bauhaus buildings and the 21st century examples is sometimes far from being obvious.
When I first visited Dessau in the late 90’s that is exactly what I thought. I knew the furniture, Mies van der Rohe’s German Pavilion in Barcelona and the Villa Tugendhat, as well as Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus building is Dessau. However when I saw the Törten Estate, the Employment Office and the Steel Haus (all located in Dessau as well) I quickly realized that while there is a certain consistency in the aesthetic of a majority of the buildings, the primary goal of Bauhaus architecture was to come up with design solutions for the problems of the early 20st Century. To me the contemporary pairings with each of these buildings is equally inspiring. Graham Phillips’ Skywood House has taken Mies’ early ideas concerning simplicity of design as well as incorporating water in architecture, all the while blurring the boundaries between manmade architecture and nature. Mies’ Villa Tugendhat used the latest technology available to achieve a similar result, Werner Sobek has taken these ideas to a whole new level with his house R128. Walter Gropius dealt with a financial crisis and food shortages with his designs for the Törten Estate, today Rolf Disch demonstrates to us how to deal with the current need for alternative energy sources in his pre-fabricated plus energy houses in the Solar Estate. Hanno Vogl-Fernheim, like Walter Gropius more than 80 years ago, uses new ideas for social architecture in his employment office. Sauerbruch Hutton’s German Environmental Agency shows us their vision for the future much the same as Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus Building less than one mile from the original building in Dessau. With few exceptions these are not aesthetic pairings but theoretical ones that demonstrate the evolution of a specific set of ideas.
Do you feel that looking back at the achievements of the Bauhaus in the field of architecture and design can teach/tell us something about the way practitioners should view their role today?
When you scratch beneath the surface aesthetic of the 12 historical buildings in the project you realize that these designs were reactions to financial crisis, food shortages and disease that effected Germany in the early 20th Century in the aftermath of WWI. It is uncanny that we are facing similar problems 90 years later; we need to come up with the solutions for our »new« century. I hope the contemporary selections in the project will demonstrate that people are thinking about these solutions. However these are just the start of the conversation we need to be having; we need to keep pushing to find new technologies and design solutions that will be the building blocks of design and architecture in the 22nd Century.
In the book published alongside the exhibition you mention your great passion for design. Who are you most inspired by? Photographers, designers, architects?
I have a wide range of influences: I was convinced to think about a career as a photographer after seeing the amazing images of Horst P. Horst. I am also influenced by the art of Ruscha, Hopper and Wyeth. Furniture from not only the Bauhaus but George Nelson and Charles and Ray Eames, and modernist architecture and design in general.
