On August 1, 1930, the director of Bauhaus Hannes Meyer was dismissed. Protest and struggles followed, initiated by the school’s students supporting the radical politics and design ideas Meyer stood for. After several weeks, the protestors were pacified by the police and the most rebellious students were expelled from the school by the new director, Mies van der Rohe. Events of those weeks, as well as their results and origins, remain obscured from the institution’s historiography. However, these offer a way to understand the school’s history and legacy in a complex and dynamic way, celebrating critically 100 years of its foundation.
Exhibition is structured around the school experienced in 1928 to 1930. Looking at the intrinsic dichotomy between theory and practice within Bauhaus, the exhibition asks about the place of architecture, industrial production and politics in the history of the school. Those historical questions about the relationship between functionalism and formalism in the school’s curriculum are raised through the use of archival sources and works of contemporary artists.
Taking students' engagement as the historical lens of its narration, the exhibition will present lesser-known architectural realizations of the school, such as "Houses with Balcony Access" in Dessau-Törten and the ADGB School in Bernau. It is in these projects that the original ideal of the school’s collective engagement in the process of building was realized and updated according to the changing political and economic landscape. [...]