Walter Gropius

The courageous fight in the never-ending struggle for new ideas, the undiscouraged search for unity and multiplicity, together with the fearless pursuit of cooperation are some of the many different idiosyncratic qualities of the Bauhaus, which Ludwig Mies van der Rohe foregrounded as a eulogy to Walter Gropius in the last text he published in Berlin (1969). An educational way of thinking, not exempt of controversies, that Gropius instilled and that characterized the school, during a large part of its brief and intense existence in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin (1919-1933). A crucible of ideas extended and transmitted beyond borders, which has reached in multitude of different expressions to our days.

At the origin, the well-known formative travels that Gropius made throughout Spain (1907-1908), attracted by the tradition and the ceramic crafts of the workshop schools , traced one of those first vectors that he would later conclude with his famous lecture Funktionelle Baukunst, given in Spanish in Madrid, Bilbao, San Sebastian (1930) and Barcelona (1932). Also legendary, is the year Mies spent working between Germany and Spain (1928-1929), a few months before becoming the third director of the Bauhaus. During that shining moment, as Mies himself would recall, the architect developed with Lilly Reich the largest exhibition project of his career, while building the German representative Pavilion that catapulted him to fame. No less significant is the choice of Hannes Meyer, its second director, to include Barcelona among the different pan-European exhibition destinations to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Bauhaus (1919-1929), thereby presenting the works of art, industrial products and architectural projects developed at the school to a vast audience. Along with its three directors, Spain, during the 1920s and early 1930s, was witness to the integration between the applied and the high arts, as well as of the scalar transition that the Bauhaus had carried out, from object design to city planning.

In addition to these pioneers, various masters went to Spain for different motivations, and captured the peculiarities of a built environment they would later reflect on their work: Vassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee spent over a month on holiday in the Côte Basque (1929), the same summer in which Josef and Anni Albers visited Barcelona and San Sebastian. Marcel Breuer spent a sabbatical period of more than four months between Madrid, Andalusia and Barcelona (1931-1932), while Lucia Moholy considered settling down in the latter city during the same time. Furthermore, many of the Bauhaus graduates spent extended periods in Spain, such as Ernst Neufert, Paul Linder and Kürt Löwengard, who even collaborated with Josep Puig i Cadafalch (1921-1922), or the less familiar Werner Drewes, Margarete Schall and Erika Zschimmer. Years later, some Bauhaus alumni arrived to Spain as Republican combatants of the Civil War, such as Georg Adams-Telscher and Ernst Scholz.

The number of Bauhäusler that felt attracted to Spain and that accessed both its tradition and its avant-garde is notable, and for reasons as varied as the craftsmanship, the landscape, the monuments, the great masters of painting, the network of foreign trade with Latin America, or even the possibilities of development afforded during the Second Republic. Some Spanish architects such as Enrique Colás and Luis Lacasa had the opportunity to visit the Bauhaus (1922), as well as to collaborate with their maximum representatives, as is the case of Joan Baptista Subirana, who worked with Gropius in Berlin (1930-1931). Spain's participation in the 1937 Paris Exposition was key to consolidating the relationship between José Luis Sert, Breuer and Gropius that had started in the CIRPAC of Barcelona (1932). This meeting set up a full stop in the evolution of the history of the avant-gardes to start a new one outside European territory.

Conferences and exhibitions, together with new educational and cultural projects paved the way as a living estate of a tradition looking for the engagement of common settings. From Francoist Spain, its immaterial heritage seemed to be the best mainstay for artists and architects to be able to discern new horizons to start again. The replacement of Gropius with Sert as Chairman of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1953, or the well-known letter Oriol Bohigas sent to Mies in 1956 proposing the German Pavilion's reconstruction, reveal the continuity of the Bauhaus learnings inside and outside Spain, while opening new paths for its re-assessment.

The first female architecture student to study under Walter Gropius at the Harvard School of Design in the Post World War II era, Daphne Bugbee Jones was an accomplished architect who brought the principles of the Bauhaus and Modernist architecture to the state of Montana in America's Inland Northwest. Along with her husband, noted environmental philosopher Henry Bugbee, Bugbee Jones merged her commitment to Modernist design, social activism, and the preservation of wilderness in the urban interphase zone around the city of Missoula.

Dieser Beitrag zeigt auf, dass sich Sound Design gegenwärtig
nicht mehr nur auf die Produktion von Filmmusik oder Popmusik beschränkt, sondern dass die klangliche Gestaltung von Alltagsgegenständen seit längerem in den Fokus von Produktdesignern gerückt ist. Dies wird am Beispiel des Klangdesigns
von Elektro-Autos deutlich, durch das zugleich die urbanen Soundscapes der Zukunft mit geprägt werden. Unter Rückgriff auf die Idee von gemeinschaftlichem Arbeiten und Gestalten des Bauhaus-Gründers Walter Gropius plädiere ich für kooperative Gestaltungsprozesse und eine produktive Durchdringung von industriellen Produktionsmechanismen
und künstlerischer Individualität.

A summary of how the Bauhaus institution began to gather a popular following in Australia in the 1930s with the appearance of Walter Gropius’s The New Architecture and the Bauhaus (1935). The illustrated book resulted inlectures and lecturers, news articles in the popular press, book reviews and lectures from Bauhaus partisans. Prior to his 1935 publication, a search of the literature suggests the modest engagement with the Bauhaus ethos was restricted to the architectural and design press. It is not clear how the Bauhaus came to the attention of the trade press in the late 1920s. After 1954, Gropius attended the RAIA Convention, Sydney and his profile grew to celebrity proportions.

Umgang der Stadt Dessau mit ihrem architektonischen Bauhaus-Erbe nach der nationalsozialistischen Machtübernahme 1933. Beschrieben wird das Schicksal des von Walter Gropius entworfenen Bauhaus-Gebäudes, der Umgang mit den Meisterhäusern, der Siedlung Dessau Törten, Arbeitsamt und der DEWOG-Siedlung in der Heidestraße von Richard Paulick.

Unlike many other publications on Nazi culture, this book is not primarily about what has been called "the Nazification of the arts," based upon state-supported use of the arts  for propaganda, a curtailment of freedom in art criticism, and the political and legal Gleichschaltung, "the forcing into conformity" under a hierarchical, dictatorial leadership (Führerprinzip) of all aspects of the various branches of national and local government, the civil service, education, public finance, business, the professions, and the arts.  To complement earlier studies of Gleichschaltung, the essays in this anthology explore the underlying beliefs of the Nazi racist state as they were developed and propagated in various fields of artistic activity.

In “Dreams of Utopia,” the penultimate chapter of The Ethical Function of Architecture, Karsten Harries quotes a familiar passage drafted by Walter Gropius in 1919 as a statement of modernity’s architectural faith. In the manner that renders his work both so refreshing and so provocative, Harries lifts Gropius’s statement out of the narrower framework of its historical context at the origins of the Bauhaus, and exploits it instead as a means of questioning the aspirations of modernity’s architecture more broadly.

This essay returns to this passage, to its assessment by Harries, and to a comparable appraisal offered by Colin Rowe in 1978, with a view to examining more closely architecture’s purported capacities as an expression of faith. It measures modernity’s claims against an older assessment, once equally familiar, offered by the author of the biblical epistle to the Hebrews—this too articulated in the vocabulary of architecture, but drawing strikingly different conclusions.

In the wake of the First World War, two interdisciplinary art schools with similar values were established in Germany and in the Soviet Union: the Bauhaus (1919–33) in Weimar and Vkhutemas (1920–30) in Moscow. Vkhutemas has often been reductively referred to as the “Soviet Bauhaus,” but it is misleading to suggest that it is derivative, as the seeds of its pedagogical approach were already planted in 1918 with the establishment of its predecessor, the State Free Art Workshops. Though the two schools developed independently, their points of intersections were multiple and their interest in each other’s activities was mutual.

Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2021 (https://www.hatjecantz.de/philipp-zitzlsperger-7927-0.html)

Rezensionen:
sehepunkte 21 (2021), Nr. 7/8 [15.07.2021] + arthistoricum
[https://www.arthistoricum.net/kunstform/rezension/ausgabe/2021/7/35935]

pdf-file: Exposé German and English

Modernist Cultures 12.3 (2017): 331–344. This essay reconsiders Reyner Banham's classic study of early twentieth-century architecture and design, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, originally published in 1960. Banham surveyed the architecture, design, and visual arts of the 'first machine age', characterized by industrial production and motorized transportation, from a self-consciously thematized perspective within the 'second machine age', populated by expendable consumer technologies and images. This revisionist perspective enabled Banham to challenge long-standing myths propagated by the dominant figures of the modern movement. In his polemical emphasis on the contingency and plurality of that which had empirically transpired in first machine age, Banham rejected the reduction of the messy history of the modern movement to the victory of a putative 'international style'. Banham reasserted the intimate connection of architectural modernism with the avant-garde artistic movements of the 1910s and 20s, emphasizing particularly the most radical ones such as expressionism, futurism, and dadaism.

Utopian visions and diagrams have engaged in a multitude of relationships. For example, a utopian narrative can be conceived as a diagram, or with the aid of diagrams, and understood through diagrammatic (re) annotation. This notion is explored through an interpretation of Thomas More’s Utopia and Andrea Branzi’s Agronica. Both schemes address various structural conditions through diagrammatic operations. In More’s scheme the channel that separates Utopia from the mainland, dug by its putative founder King Abraxas, inscribes a circular boundary, reiterated in the city walls and moat; it is resonant with contemporaneous rota and volvelle schemata. Conversely, Andrea Branzi’s “mirror simulator” multiplies Agronica’s centrifugal grid to infinity, negating the “outside,” and is evocative of pervasive virtual networks.

El 20 de marzo de 1919, el arquitecto alemán Walter Gropius (1883-1969), junto a un pequeño grupo de jóvenes profesores, artistas, intelectuales y estudiantes, fundaban en la ciudad de Weimar, la Staatliche Bauhaus: una nueva y revolucionaria escuela que marcaría un punto de inflexión en la historia del diseño.

El nombre Bauhaus, era el resultado de la unión de los vocablos alemanes Bau, construcción, y Haus, casa; casa de construcción, en alusión a las ‘Bauhütter’ medievales (gremios de constructores de iglesias): un anhelo de Walter Gropius, por resucitar su espíritu comunitario.

Retrospectivamente, la Bauhaus es una consecuencia directa de su época: un período fuertemente marcado por la inestabilidad política, el desempleo, la inflación, una devaluación de la moneda, y un descontento generalizado que había producido en los jóvenes alemanes, el deseo de una revolución cultural.

Se trataba de una nueva generación, que rechazaba el arte del pasado nacionalista, y abogaba por un futuro esperanzador. Bajo un espíritu utópico, la idea de Gropius era la de hacer surgir ese hombre nuevo, que llevará la esperanza del cambio y la renovación: “…una criatura dotada en todos los sentidos y formada por los mejores artistas y arquitectos de la época, que pudiese crear el presente y el futuro de un siglo moderno”[2].

Un prototipo que ha pervivido en el tiempo, evolucionando, mutando; y que, con la incursión de los sistemas digitales y de las tecnologías de prefabricación a finales del siglo XX, quedaría conformado en los modelos MediaLab: centros de innovación y desarrollo, exentos de una matriz académica convencional, que incorpora la tecnología digital en la enseñanza como un instrumento flexible para la adquisición de nuevos saberes, a través de procesos creativos, abiertos, colaborativos e interdisciplinares.

En este contexto, este artículo hace foco en esos procesos, e indaga las conexiones entre la pedagogía Bauhaus, y los modelos Medialab: un laboratorio de enseñanza, de investigación y de práctica, que incorpora lo digital, buscando reformular la currícula del diseño, modificando el rol de los docentes, transformados en tutores del proceso de aprendizaje, permitiendo de este modo, repensar los caminos y los contenidos que se imparten.

A 100 años del nacimiento de la Bauhaus, se hace necesaria una revisión crítica de su impacto y evolución dentro del diseño. Una búsqueda de sus esencias, pervivencias, y elementos trascendentales, que se han convertido en patrones de inspiración para las escuelas de diseño de los años venideros.

Un proyecto reunió en Buenos Aires a Amancio Williams con Walter Gropius. A fines de los 60´s fueron convocados por el gobierno de la República Federal de Alemania, para proyectar en conjunto la sede de su Embajada en Buenos Aires.
Durante el gobierno de Arturo Illia (1963-1966) mediante una ley se habilitó el canje de un palacete que poseía la Embajada de Alemania en Buenos Aires, a cambio de una porción del terreno de la Plaza Alemania en el barrio de Palermo, para dar lugar a la construcción de una nueva residencia para el embajador en Argentina. En 1964, en visita al país, el presidente de la República Federal de Alemania, Heinrich Lübcke, colocó la piedra fundamental del futuro edificio.
En diciembre de 1968, con 85 años de edad, Gropius viajó a Buenos Aires acompañado por un socio de The Architects Collaborative (TAC), Alexander Cvijanovic, para trabajar una semana en el estudio de Williams; la colaboración continuó luego a la distancia, intercambiando correspondencia. Para entonces la situación argentina había cambiado, un golpe militar había derrocado al presidente Illia y tanto desde el gobierno municipal como desde el Estado nacional se negó la cesión del terreno adjudicado, proponiendo cambiarlo por otro.
Con un proceso de trabajo cargado de incertidumbres, marchas y contramarchas (involucró a arquitectos argentinos, alemanes y norteamericanos, cuatro presidentes de Argentina, dos de la República Federal Alemana, dos embajadores de ese país, más una importante cantidad de personalidades de la cultura y la política de ambas partes), el episodio estuvo cruzado por múltiples tensiones y permite revisar el estado de situación hacia el final de la larga década del sesenta: la cultura arquitectónica, los conflictos urbanos, la inestabilidad política argentina y la diplomacia alemana de la guerra fría, se concentraron en una plaza de la ciudad de Buenos Aires.

The Bauhaus show at the MoMA in 1938 was the first comprehensive exhibition of the Bauhaus. The political situation caused considerable obstacles for the organizers of the 1938 MoMA exhibition, making loans difficult and putting former Bauhauslers who were still in Germany at risk, but it does not comprehensively explain the divided reception of the show. What also needs to be taken into consideration is a substantial misunderstanding between the intentions of Gropius and his friends involved in the exhibition’s planning, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the New York audience who questioned the relevance of the Bauhaus in the US at that moment.

This Thesis is one of the few studies that focuses exclusively on the student experience at the Bauhaus school of art, architecture, and design in Germany.  Themes include the Bauhaus students' involvement with mysticism, communism, and Nazism.

Emerging European Modernist architecture in the 1920s and 1930s apparently shared certain principles with Japanese traditional building: The construction principles and aesthetic qualities that Modernism strove for – ‘asymmetrical plan’, ‘flexibility of the interior space’, ‘modularity,’ ‘naked materials,’ seemed to have existed in Japan for hundreds of years. Writers such as Tetsurō Yoshida in The Japanese House and Garden, published 1935 in German, emphasised these similarities and presented the Japanese tradition in a distinctly Modernist manner.  After World War II as Modernism became dominant in the West Japanese traditional building became a prominent and lively subject of the architectural discourse. We can follow this in the architectural press, which is also the main source of this research. The wave of interest culminated between the mid-1950s and the early 1960s. But why exactly was Japan so attractive for European architects at this particular time? Were Japanese traditional principles an object of a purposeful misreading? And, more generally, what significance did this encounter have for Modern architecture in the West?

The essay first brings an introduction to the phenomenon and pinpoints the important moments in its development. It then looks closer at the way European architects interpreted Japan and its relationship to the current development of Modern architecture, namely on the ambiguous role of history in this discourse. Within a broader comparison of concurrent ideas on Japan, the main focus is on the writings of Erwin A. Gutkind, Walter Gropius, and Bernard Rudofsky. Finally, the essay suggests an interpretation: Did the Japanese tradition serve as a ‘prosthetic history’ of Modernism?

With the breakthrough of modernism, various efforts were undertaken to rationalize architecture and building processes using industrial principles. Few architects explored these as intensively as Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus. Before World War One, and increasingly in the interwar years, Gropius and a number of colleagues undertook various experiments that manifested in a series of projects, essays, model houses and Siedlungen. These were aimed at conceptually different goals, i.e., they followed two different categories of industrial logic: First, a flexible construction kit and, second, an assembly line serial production. This article traces the genesis of these two concepts and analyses their characteristics using these early manifestations. Compared to existing literature, this article takes into account hitherto neglected primary sources, as well as technological and construction history aspects, allowing for a distinction based not only on theoretical, but also technological and structural characteristics. This article shows that Gropius succeeds in formulating and exploring the two principles, in theory and practice, as well as drawing conclusions by the end of the 1920s. With them, he contributed significantly to the rationalization of architecture, and his principles have been picked up and developed further by numerous architects since then.

The Reconstruction Story of a Modern Monument:
Bauhaus-Dessau Masters’ Houses

Bauhaus, of which 100th anniversary is being celebrated in 2019, plays an
important role in the educational programmes put forward in the field of
design and building production to meet the social needs that have evolved
after the industrialization. This article aims to discuss the historical
evolution and reconstruction of loss parts of the Masters’ House
ensemble, which is designed by Gropius for the teaching staff of the
Bauhaus. Masters’ Houses comprised of the detached Director House
used by Gropius himself and three double units of which first users were
famous artists László Moholy-Nagy and Lyonel Feininger, Georg Muche
and Oskar Schlemmer, and Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee.
Re-interpretation of lost parts of the Dessau Masters’ Houses, which have
an important place in the history of modern architecture, is a noteworthy
version of reconstruction practice. After the process for determining how
to transmit Gropius and Moholy-Nagy houses which has been listed in
UNESCO World Heritage List as a part of Bauhaus heritage to the future
generations, a contemporary design concept reflects original mass
composition preferred rather than building a replica of authentic design.
This approach can be considered as a continuation of the Bauhaus’
progressive philosophy. It is thought that the interpretation and
presentation approach for the lost parts of Dessau Masters’ Houses is a
positive case of reconciliation of creativity and architectural conservation.

Students, teachers, and practitioners of design disciplines have still much to learn from the Bauhaus’ successive pedagogical experiments. The school attempted to bypass disciplinary boundaries through collective workshops on materials, classes for techniques of manipulation like drawing, weaving and carving, etc., and practical exercises on composition and form. Its pedagogy focused on manual work, collective tasks and creativity. Yet, it received different interpretations along the school’s history, shifting towards cooperative, social and reformist concerns, and tightening the relations with industry. By the late twenties, new forms of pedagogical cooperation between artists’ skills, craftmanship and scientific knowledge were envisioned. Confronting our own context surrounded and pervaded by technical objects, infrastructures and procedures, we can take some inspiration from Meyer’s Bauhaus, in particular, to renovate our pedagogical approach to design disciplines: what is left for collective creativity and interdisciplinary applications? How to foster such creativity through teaching and exercises, in order to rise to the challenges coming from a world to come?
One possible way is to emphasize the necessary improvement of environmental conditions, as the defining context of any individual or collective experience – including pedagogy itself. Along this line, I will sketch a possible connection between the Bauhaus Dessau’s teaching programs and pragmatist views of education. Dewey elaborated an inspiring, experience-based conception of education, in the widest social meaning of the term, in the exact same years of the Bauhaus experiments. Just as Gropius and Meyer, the American philosopher argued for a close consideration on context or environmental conditions, as a constant of human experience. At an immediate scale, this implied a close attention to the space of schools and classrooms themselves. At the largest, renewing pedagogy involved addressing the context of industrialization, urbanization and working conditions at the age of corporate capitalism. The orientations taken at Dessau toward an integrated education of vision (Moholy-Nagy) but also social concerns, environmental design and landscape (Meyer) suggest a possible convergence of views with pragmatist perspectives. They may inspire our own syllabi for training designers, architects and landscape architects. Focusing on that convergence, I will reconsider the issue of creativity in pedagogy through the concern for environmental conditions of shared experience. Designing built space as open-ended places, able to articulate scales and accommodate multiple experiences, seems the first and foremost task, both within and outside our schools.


[German:]
Lehrende und Lernende der Designdisziplinen können von den pädagogischen Experimenten des Bauhauses nach wie vor viel für die eigene Praxis lernen. Die Schule versuchte, disziplinäre Grenzen zu überwinden, indem sie gemeinsame Kurse über Materialien, Klassen für Techniken wie Zeichnen, Weben und Schnitzen usw. sowie praktische Übungen zu Komposition und Form einführte. Die Pädagogik stellte auf
Handarbeit, gemeinsame Aufgaben und Kreativität ab. Dennoch wurde sie im Laufe der Schulgeschichte unterschiedlich interpretiert, konzentrierte sich etwa auf kooperative, soziale und reformistische Anliegen und intensivierte die Beziehungen zur Industrie. Ende der zwanziger Jahre wurden neue Formen der pädagogischen Zusammenarbeit zwischen Kunst, Handwerk und Wissenschaft entwickelt. Aus Sicht der heutigen Welt, die von technischen Objekten, Infrastrukturen und komplexen Prozessen durchdrungen ist, können wir uns von Hannes Meyers Bauhaus inspirieren lassen, um insbesondere die pädagogischen Ansätze der Designdisziplinen zu erneuern: Wie steht es um kollektive Kreativität und interdisziplinäre Ansätze? Wie kann man diese Kreativität durch Unterricht und Übungen fördern, um den Herausforderungen der Zukunft zu begegnen? Eine Möglichkeit besteht darin, die notwendige Verbesserung der Umweltbedingungen als bestimmenden Kontext jeder individuellen oder kollektiven Erfahrung – einschließlich der Pädagogik selbst – hervorzuheben. In diesem Zusammenhang diskutiere ich die Parallelen zwischen den Lehrkonzepten am Bauhaus Dessau und pragmatischen Bildungsvorstellungen im ersten Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts, wie sie etwa von John Dewey vertreten wurden. Dewey entwickelte eine erfahrungsbasierte Konzeption von Bildung, im weitesten sozialen Sinne des Begriffs, in genau den gleichen Jahren der Bauhaus-Experimente. Wie Gropius und Meyer plädierte der amerikanische Philosoph für eine genaue Betrachtung des Kontexts (genauer: der ›Umweltbedingungen‹) als Konstante menschlicher Erfahrung. Konkret bedeutete dies, dass man sich intensiv mit dem Raum der Schulen und Klassenzimmer selbst beschäftigte. Im größeren Zusammenhang der Bauhaus-Pädagogik wiederum ging es um den Kontext von Industrialisierung, Urbanisierung und den Arbeitsbedingungen im Zeitalter des Unternehmenrkapitalismus. Die in Dessau eingeschlagene Richtung einer integrierten Seherziehung (Moholy-Nagy) unter Berücksichtigung sozialer Belange, Umweltgestaltung und Landschaft (Meyer) deuten auf eine mögliche Konvergenz von Ansichten mit pragmatischen Perspektiven hin. Sie können unsere eigenen Lehrpläne für die Ausbildung von Designern, Architekten und Landschaftsarchitekten inspirieren. Mit Blick auf diese Konvergenz gilt es, die Frage der Kreativität in der Pädagogik unter Berücksichtigung der Umweltbedingungen und der gestalteten Umwelt als vielschichtigem Erfahrungsraum zu überdenken.

The industrial design imagined by Gropius - art at the service of industry - has become, as Argan has said, a project to serve the consumer. Today, mass production realized in an exemplary manner what Argan understood well in advance: while it makes furniture and soft furnishings available to everybody at a low cost, it is not an evolution of society, but only an ecstatic exaltation of consumption. The death of art is sanctioned by the loss of the highest bet placed by Bauhaus: the confident expectation that the renewed design capacity could achieve, through aesthetics, a vehicle of ethical values. The analysis of the Bauhaus aesthetic of Argan exemplifies a method for revising the philosophy of the idealistic type. Argan’s effort was not to propose an idealistic interpretation released from the sources and the works. From his point of view philosophy does not belong to a world apart, but enters the real world and draws from it abundantly. The products of art that occupy a physical and symbolic space allow this direct comparison between the world of ideas and that of sense experience. The conclusions are in close relation with this method of analysis.

ISSN: 1138-1590

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ENGLISH SUMMARY
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“Licharchitektur” or “Light Architecture” in the inter-war period is a phenomenon linked to technological development, to avant-garde artistic expressions and to new commercial metropolitan demands. The advances both in lighting and in the glass industry are driven by the Deutsche Werkbund in order to get a cooperation between lighting engineers and architects. In Germany, modern architecture promptly uses these resources to achieve a dazzling, night image that stands out in the commercial streets. The huge success of this trend stirs up a debate about the best way to control its impact on urban landscape. In Spain, the most avant-garde architects pay attention to those German novelties thereupon and begin to add them in some works as a sign of modernism. Even the question of regulating the urban aesthetic problem is raised, endorsing the German model.

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RESUMEN ESPAÑOL
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La "lichtarchitektur" o "arquitectura luminosa" es un fenómeno del periodo de entreguerras vinculado al desarrollo tecnológico, a la expresión artística de las vanguardias y a las nuevas demandas comerciales de la metrópolis. Los avances en luminotecnia y en la industria del vidrio son impulsados desde la Deutsche Werkbund para lograr una cooperación entre ingenieros luminotécnicos y arquitectos. En Alemania, la arquitectura moderna en seguida utiliza estos recursos para conseguir una imagen nocturna deslumbrante que destaque en las calles comerciales. El enorme éxito de esta tendencia suscita un debate para ver cómo controlar su impacto sabre el panorama urbano. En España, los arquitectos más vanguardistas pronto se hacen eco de esas novedades alemanas y comienzan a incorporarlas en algunas obras como signo de modernidad. Incluso se abre el debate sabre la regulación del problema estético urbano, apostando por seguir el modelo alemán.

Članak je nastao kao opsežan prikaz knjige Povijest moderne arhitekture I-II. Dvotomni povijesni preglednik moderne arhitekture Brune Zevija, talijanskog arhitekta, povjesničara i teoretičara arhitekture, izvorno je napisan prije 60 godina i u međuvremenu je više puta nadopunjavan i proširivan sve do 1995., gotovo do samoga kraja autorova života.

This paper argues that the writings of cultural-theorist Jean Baudrillard from the late 1960s and early 1970s provided an important contribution to twentieth-century Design Theory. Baudrillard’s theory of consumer society was informed by a critical engagement with themes that preoccupied twentieth-century design practice and theory. Rejecting the designer’s testimony as evidence, Baudrillard insisted that design be understood within the broader sociological context of consumer society. Towards the close of the 1960s, as the universalist project of Functionalism was attacked by various factions, Baudrillard uniquely argued that Functionalism had not simply failed to establish a singular mode of design in opposition to the multiplicity of fashion; rather Functionalism was fashion’s progenitor and perfect exemplar.

Hace cien años abrió sus puertas en Weimar un proyecto ideado por Walter Gropius a partir de la fusión de la Escuela Gran Ducal Sajona de Bellas Artes con la Gran Ducal Sajona de de Artes Aplicadas que recibiría el nombre de Staatliche Bauhaus.
Este libro se ocupa de lo que aquella escuela fue mientras estuvo abierta, pero también de lo que llegó a ser una vez clausurada. Su actividad entre 1919 y 1933 fue el fundamento de un elaborado relato que serviría de modelo a miles de instituciones educativas deseosas de arrinconar la vieja formación académica que pervivía en sus aulas desde finales del siglo XIX.
Pero, aunque los orígenes de la Bauhaus se remontan a las ideas reformistas que llevaron a Gropius a impulsar la unificación de las artes en una institución liderada por la arquitectura, la guerra y la posterior revolución dieron forma a una nueva sociedad que planteaba nuevos retos. La respuesta a esos desafíos hizo que la Bauhaus se viera afectada por numerosos conflictos internos. Esas tensiones se debieron, en su mayor parte, a discrepancias pedagógicas de gran hondura y a diferentes concepciones sobre la función política y social que la escuela debía desempeñar en el momento histórico que le tocó vivir. Hannes Meyer, que ocupó la dirección tras la salida de Gropius, quiso desmarcarse del formalismo de su antecesor impulsando en la Bauhaus una orientación social que provocaría una ruptura con la tradición artística que representaban Klee y Kandinsky. Tales divergencias minaron la unidad interna en sus últimos años e hicieron más difícil afrontar el acoso político a que se vio enfrentada la escuela en sus últimos años.
Tras la llegada de Hitler al poder la escuela fue cerrada y muchos de sus profesores tuvieron que exiliarse, la mayoría de ellos en Estados Unidos. La New Bauhaus de Chicago fue un primer intento de continuidad institucional que incorporó prácticas ajenas a la tradición artística. Pero en el exilio comenzó a elaborarse un nuevo relato de la Bauhaus no del todo fiel con lo sucedido. El interés de Gropius por hacer de la escuela un elemento esencial de su carrera tuvo su consecuencia en la exposición del MoMA de Nueva York, en 1938, una primera interpretación de la Bauhaus como hito de la modernidad.
El renacimiento de la escuela en la República Federal de Alemania no puede desvincularse del marco político que supuso la Guerra Fría. Su legado sirvió para dar forma a la nueva cultura alemana que los Estados Unidos tenían en mente, y las dos Alemanias interpretaron ese legado en un mismo sentido: la Bauhaus practicaba una suerte de modernidad apolítica y era un símbolo del sistema capitalista. Por ese motivo, se dedica un amplio espacio a la Hochschule für Gestaltung de Ulm que daría dio forma en momentos diferentes a las distintas herencias de la Bauhaus (Gropius, Itten y Meyer) para terminar cerrando sus puertas en 1968 como su antecesora lo había hecho en 1933.
Pero la Bauhaus dejó una importante huella en otros países europeos. Dos ejemplos muestran esa influencia: el Institut de l’Enviroment que Claude Schnaidt, gran admirador de Meyer. dirigió en París; y el movimiento del Basic Design impulsado, entre otros, por Richard Hamilton que cambió el sistema de educación artística en el Reino Unido a partir de la adaptación de las ideas de Itten y Klee.
Para que todo ello fuera posible, y para que muchas instituciones se sintieran herederas de la Bauhaus, fue necesario que la realidad de la escuela se insertara en una construcción cultural y fuera objeto de una sistemática promoción durante décadas. Esto es lo que hizo Walter Gropius a partir de 1935, cuando asumió el papel esencial en la creación de un mito y supo dar forma a la idea que Mies van der Rohe consideraba como el principal valor de la Bauhaus. Para ello, Gropius reescribiría, manipularía y adaptaría hechos y testimonios, de manera que fueran aptos para todos los públicos; y conseguiría fundir su propia persona con la Bauhaus, y a la Bauhaus con la modernidad del siglo XX.

Resumen
Gordon Matta-Clark (Nueva York,1943 -1978), hijo del pintor surrealista chileno Roberto Matta. Gordon Matta-Clark artista poliédrico, energético, dinámico, explosivo, extremadamente inteligente e intuitivo, que cuando a finales de los años sesenta irrumpe en la esfera artística de Nueva York, lo hace con los títulos y avales de propiedad de primer beneficiario de la herencia de los años sesenta: pop, minimalismo y conceptualismo.
Conocido por sus ‘‘cuttings’’, transformaciones de edificios mediante cortes o extracciones de fragmentos, y considerado como uno de los artistas conceptuales más importantes de la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Estudió arquitectura en la Universidad de Ithaca en el Estado de Nueva York y literatura en París, pero decidió ser artista y no ejercer como arquitecto, pese a todo –y no sin razón– se ha descrito a Gordon Matta-Clark como “el único y verdadero arquitecto decontructivista”. Matta-Clark opera la des-composición como proceso entropológico de desmantelamiento de elementos: paredes, suelos, ventanas, puertas.
Matta-Clark situado en el marco ideológico de la hermenéutica marxista proponía la transformación de las organizaciones ciudadanas en un moderno proyecto de emancipación, mediante acciones de belleza convulsa, propias de los tiempos de crisis, buscaba socavar las bases sistémicas del capitalismo tardío y lo hacía cuestionando el concepto mismo de propiedad. Así sus investigaciones con el grupo Anarchitecture [Anarquitectura] plantean cuestiones históricas y filosóficas de amplio alcance sobre la naturaleza del espacio social y de la propiedad, sobre el profundo nexo entre propiedad e identidad, así como la relación entre el concepto de propiedad y las condiciones de su uso, su consumo y, aún más importante, su transformación en desecho.

[ENG] The aim of this research is to analyse the pioneer architectural photobook, Internationale Architektur (1925), studying the convergence between Gropius’ ideological approach and Moholy-Nagy’s editorial design in order to build a solid message about the emerging modern architecture. By comparing photobooks designed by Moholy-Nagy previously, and taking into account the significant changes made by Gropius for its second edition (1927), it may be easier to understand the importance of dissemination as a modern, specific phenomenon; therefore, today we may see the International Style as a perfect commercial tag for advertising architectural Modernism, started with the launch of the first Bauhausbücher.

[ESP] Se plantea un análisis del pionero de los fotolibros de arquitectura, Internationale Architektur (1925), estudiando la convergencia entre enfoque ideológico de Gropius y el diseño editorial de Moholy-Nagy para construir un discurso sólido sobre la emergente arquitectura moderna. Mediante la comparación con fotolibros anteriormente diseñados por Moholy-Nagy, y considerando los significativos cambios introducidos por Gropius en su segunda edición (1927), se puede comprender mejor la importancia de la divulgación como fenómeno específicamente moderno; lo cual, hoy, nos permite poder interpretar al International Style como una etiqueta comercial óptima para la propaganda de la arquitectura moderna, iniciada con el lanzamiento del primer Bauhausbücher.

Industrial architects in early twentieth century faced the so-called ‘factory problem’. It had two important components that were interrelated: On the one hand the plant’s spatial order, and on the other hand the quest for more effective ways of exercising power at the workplace. Both were centred on a new interest in the human factor of production. Workers were no longer regarded as mere objects of discipline but rather as individuals whose individuality was to be utilised. In this context a new discourse on work environment was started. Some of the most important German architects and engineers were determined to beautify the factory and to create a human habitat inside. Accordingly, notions of efficiency were combined with the new concept of beautification – rationalisation was “humanised”. The problem experts faced was: How to create an atmosphere of trust which would promote the efficient usage of workers’ abilities? It had been most important to humanise the workplace, respect the worker as subject of production and create conditions, which increased the working morale.

Presentación acerca de la formación lenta y progresiva de una tradición funcional en los países nórdicos como alternativa a la fórmula rupturista del Movimiento Moderno.
Se toma la obra del arquitecto danés ARNE JACOBSEN por ser una figura "puente" entre la tradición clasicista de la Academia de Bellas Artes de Copenhague (presente directa o indirectamente en su etapa de formación en los años 20: C.F.Hansen, M.Bindesboll, C.Petersen, K.Klint), la adopción esquiva del Funcionalismo centroeuropeo en Dinamarca bajo la fórmula de la "Tradición Funcional" (E.G.Asplund, Kay Fisker, A.Aalto), y la superación del Movimiento Moderno bajo el influjo de la arquitectura norteamericana (Mies van der Rohe, Eero Saarinen, S.O.M.) tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial, situándose en la vanguardia de los años 50 y 60 (hasta su muerte en 1971).

Il Bauhaus per Ioannis Despotopoulos è stato una
tappa importante nella ricerca di un’idea personale
dell’arte e dell’architettura. Si è recato a Weimar nel
1922, nel periodo in cui arti e scienze fiorivano nella città
e nell’omonima repubblica. Al Bauhaus Despotopoulos
scopre la questione del rapporto e della sintesi tra
discipline architettoniche e artistiche; rimarranno dei
temi trattati costantemente lungo il corso del suo lavoro.
Anche se al Bauhaus rimane solo tre semestri, la scuola e
la personalità di Gropius lo segnano e lo seguono come
un’ombra durante tutta la vita.

Tom Wolfe, in his book From Bauhaus to Our House, had it backwards: The Bauhaus, rather than being alien to the United States as Wolfe suggests, was originally home grown. The Bauhaus, established by architect Walter Gropius to promote a powerful fusion of art, technology, and craft, has renewed relevance now, when people are looking at ways in which education can stimulate creativity and innovation through learning that is more “hands on.” The Bauhaus (German for “build house”) was a “makerspace” par excellence. Far more often, architects shape the spaces in which learning occurs rather than the learning curriculum itself. Yet architects, since they straddle the fields of art and technology, have unique insight into the kinds of creative curricula now sought for STEM, and even more especially STEAM education. An overview of the Bauhaus highlights this.

Since its foundation in Germany in 1919, the Bauhaus has allowed the profession of design to reach new heights, establishing the bases for its academic teaching, putting art at the service of industry, integrating different disciplines, from sculpture to psychology, to provide design with a character in which the true work tool is the human mind and its perception of the image. Placing the education in being above the education in doing, a principle enacted by the Bauhaus since its inception and evidenced in the work of Johannes Itten, is an approach not to dismiss, because although technical competence is critical to job performance, only creativity and comprehensiveness give each individual the opportunity to offer satisfactory solutions to the problems and needs of her community.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, art historians and urban studies scholars have been pleading for a more nuanced analysis of the Bauhaus in order to divorce from the one-sided affirmative reading of the iconic German art school. Yet, within the prevailing heroic narrative that still dominates contemporary public discourse after the 100-year anniversary of the school, the Bauhaus is praised for its affordable as well as working class-oriented design and it is thus depicted as intrinsically antithetical to today’s neoliberal housing market and bourgeois planning practices. To complicate this somewhat lopsided account, this paper draws on Henri Lefebvre’s critique of functionalist architecture and Michel Foucault’s notion of biopower to examine the late Bauhaus through a biopolitical lens. It first presents the Törten working-class housing estate in Dessau, Germany to scrutinize how biopolitical socio-spatial practices crystalize in Bauhaus urban planning and architecture. The second part of the paper turns to the film screen to discuss how the Weimar-era narrative of bio-functional modernism materializes in Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy’s late 20s, early 30s filmic works on urban life, the so-called “city symphonies.” Considering the postwar afterlives of the Bauhäusler, the Conclusion places these findings in a broader historical perspective and reflects on the contemporary implications of a Foucauldo-Lefebvrian rereading of the Bauhaus. It is within this final contextualization that the paper inquires into the possibilities of people-centered urban dwelling in the age of biopower.