My Bauhaus Trip

My first touchpoint with Bauhaus was a decade ago in my college’s first design class. Now the golden time to visit it has come, namely the Bauhaus 100 year anniversary. Early this year, I watch a touching movie based on the real Bauhaus story called Lotte am Bauhaus. From the female perspective, it illustrate how German women inspired and practiced from the systematic design education a century ago. After then I decided to visit Weimar and Dessau this year. Taking the privilege that I currently base in Germany, I took the holiday for this particularly exciting design trip.

If you are not so familiar with the #bauhaus100 event this year, I strongly recommend the website https://www.bauhaus100.de/

I made also sketchnotes during my visit:

Erfurt

My first station is Erfurt, the capital and largest city in the state of Thuringia. There are two relevant Bauhaus exhibits, namely Bauhaus Mädels and Bauhaus Frauen.

Bauhaus Mädels unfolds the design development of four girls: Gertrud Arndt, Marianne Brandt, Margarete Heymann and Margaretha Reichardt. Their courageous, talents and efforts are rendered by artefacts across many categories, including textile, carpentry, graphics, ceramics, industrial design etc.

Bauhaus Mädels Exhibit

The second one located in the art museum in downtown Erfurt. As echo to the previous one, it shows the the female graduates from Weimar Bauhaus-University, which is reestablished after the World War II. The artists are diverse and brought a range of installations and sculpture that are partially influenced by Bauhaus spirit and pedagogical concept.

Weimar

As an incredibly a small town, Weimar is the cradle of literature stars like Goethe and Schiller as well as the composer Liszt. Yet the focus of the trip focus on the newly opened Bauhaus Museum Weimar. It shows the historical original concept Bauhaus School the well-known Gesamtkunstwerk in which all the arts, architecture, music, and theater would eventually be brought together.

Teaching system of bauhaus and the banner of the exhibit in the shopping street.

The exhibition in the first floor is divided according to the diverse sector of the Bauhaus concept. In all sectors, both teachers and students’ works are presented, including Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky. In the upper floor, exhibit shows the diverse concepts and contributions of the three genius deans of the school Walter Gropius, Hans Emil and Henry van de Velde.

The highlights of the exhibitions is the third floor, where the Bauhaus groups turned Geometry and basic material concept into theatrical pieces. The performative expressions of the puppets is truly inspiring.

In the central part of the town, there is also an exhibit documenting the typography in the past 100 years.

As one of the UNESCO sites, the Bauhaus school in Weimar is definitely the core target of the trip. I booked a 3 hour tour understanding the ins and outs of the campus.

To list some of the remarkable details of the building:

• Each half floor are decorated with the basic 3 shapes in basic 3 colors. For me it is the initial concept of modern visual guiding system.
• The emboss sculptures dynamically illustrate how the building could potentially separated from the Baroque fancies.
• The largest glass window for art students facing north for the sake of light and shadow.
• Memorable place of Gropius’s 5x5m office equipped with gorgeous modern furniture with advanced lighting, heating, sewage system.

Dessau

Dessau, the iconic second headquarter of Bauhaus, is amazing though I saw its facade elsewhere for million times. I took another tour listening carefully about every single details of the building. They all consistently demonstrate how basic shape and material could bring huge impact on the functionality and appearance. Hereby I captured some below:

• Big glass window, exaggeratedly architecture miracle, not merely for art students 100 years ago. The mechanism of opening and switching is taken from the factory back then.
• The big dining hall with standard cantine. It equipped with polished white furniture also based on the basic shape.
• The silent closing door knob of its theater
• The Light weight elegant theater chairs
• The tube shape light against the over decorated lighting
• The single dormitory with panoramic balcony and working table (it’s luxury even for students now) By the way one protip: you can book a dorm night for 40 Euro if you were early enough.

Afterwards, I also visited the Meisterhäuser. The roles of the building have also changed. Some of them is the artist atelier, some are the museum, some are residency program, some gallery. As the architecture for living, their approach and consideration are not identical with the school.

As a designer today, I am bit envy about the passion and breakthrough of the Bauhaus group. However at the same time, the trip boosted my understanding about the basic elements of design.

I took the bike for the whole journey. It gave me the freedom to navigate between different spots. By the way for bike fan, the river Elbe bike path is highly recommended. Some sites are also marked as UNESCO sites.