The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation is dedicating its 2015 annual program to the theme “Collective”. – and thus the work of the second Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer.
The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation is dedicating its 2015 annual program to the theme of “Collective”. At a time when communal living and working are once again gaining in attractiveness, it made sense to review the work of the second Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer. The exhibition “The Coop Principle” is the first since the 1989/90 retrospective to mark the centenary of his birth. After all, it was the Swiss architect who was appointed by Walter Gropius in 1927 as the first head of the newly created architecture department of the State Bauhaus – with the Freidorf cooperative housing estate in Muttenz near Basel (1919-26) as a reference. From then on, he consistently adapted teaching and workshops to the idea of community: Bauhaus students were involved in the planning and building process at an early stage, for example in the construction of the ADGB school in Bernau and the extension of the housing estate in Dessau-Törten (both 1928-30).
The design of the exhibition in Dessau is based on a traveling Bauhaus exhibition initiated by Meyer himself and designed by Alfred Arndt. In cooperation with the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau and others, a stool and a table from the so-called Volkswohnung, which never went into series production at the time, were reproduced. The exhibition is very vivid in this respect.
Unfortunately, it leaves many questions unanswered: Why did Gropius bring Meyer to Dessau in 1927 – who until then had no teaching experience? Why did he even propose him as his successor a year later and was ultimately involved in his resignation? How did Meyer, an avowed communist, implement his idea of collective planning practice in the Soviet Union (1930-36) and in Mexico (1939-49) – and who were his comrades-in-arms there? What concrete difficulties did he encounter in these two revolutionary countries and to what extent did he continue to live his idea of collective planning practice there? You learn nothing about any of this in Dessau. To fill in some gaps in knowledge, visitors can refer to the catalog of the Hannes Meyer retrospective from 1989/90.
The exhibition runs until October 4 at the Bauhaus Dessau, daily 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
