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Bauhaus Dessau
Bauhaus Dessau:
Teaching
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Teaching

Teaching

With its programmes, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation offers a wide range of opportunities for artistic, scientific and research-based engagement with the heritage of the Bauhaus in Dessau as well as for education and mediation.

Bauhaus Lab

The Bauhaus Lab is an experimental format that studies and showcases a selected object from modern design history. The programme focuses on a specific object that is of interest because of its theoretical content: the interdisciplinary analysis of its material conditions, historical interconnections, speculative paths, and intellectual inspiration is in contrast to the unequivocal nature of the widespread historiography of modernity for it introduces the ambiguity and polyphony of possibilities of another version of the past and present. The three-month postgraduate programme is aimed at young professionals working in the field of architecture, design, and exhibitions. The exhibitions and publications developed during the course of the students’ joint research and field studies are a valuable contribution to an alternative, critical historiography of the Bauhaus and modernity.

The Institute of Environment was an intellectual melting pot, a crucible of exchanges and social and intellectual claims, where there was a desire to test new ideas in order to change society. …We had the idea, like the students of the schools that frequented the Institute, that the possibility of constructing an avant-garde way of thinking, with serious interrogations of methods, was possible there. (Monique Eleb, The Institute of Environment. The Experience of a Utopia. 1969-1976)

Bauhaus Lab 2024
On behalf of the environment: Pedagogies of unrest

The metal plate by architect Jean Prouvé is one of the few reminders of the building of the Institute for the Environment, which was opened in 1969 shortly after the closure of the Ulm School of Design in Paris. The Institute is in continuity with the Ulm School of Design in terms of personnel and content. Claude Schnaidt, who was still head of the building department in Ulm and later supported the Bauhaus in the GDR, took over the management of the institute. In the heated climate of worldwide student protests and growing awareness of the threats to the environment, the multidisciplinary research and design centre wanted to redefine the role of architects and designers.

Starting with the façade element of the institute building, the Bauhaus Lab 2024 examines the history of this school in its far-reaching networks of actors, knowledge cultures and political contexts. It explores the concepts of the environment and the methods of teaching and research that were negotiated in the everyday life of this unique place of learning and thought. As a result of the three months of research, the international participants in the lab will develop an exhibition in the Bauhaus building that links this educational experiment with current search movements for environmentally and socially just design education.

Research field
Global Modernism Studies
Language
English
Duration
three months
Number of participants
up to eight
Target group
Scholars and practitioners from the fields of architecture, art, design, curating, and related disciplines
Conditions
Participation is free of charge, and all participants are given 24/7 access to workspaces in the Bauhaus Building. Participants will also receive a daily allowance of EUR 24.00. The programme includes field trips; travel and accommodation costs incurred during these excursions will be covered by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation.
Envisioned outcome
Collective exhibition in the Bauhaus Building; collectively edited anthology, published by Spector Books in the context of the ‘Bauhaus Paperback’ series.
Provider
Academy of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
Application period
up to 14 January 2024
Period of time
13 May to 21 August 2024

Prof. Regina Bittner, PhD
Project leadership
bittner@bauhaus-dessau.de

Philipp Sack
Project management
sack@bauhaus-dessau.de

Open Studios

Up to and including the present day, the Bauhaus continues to be regarded as one of the most important institutions for artistic and design education. With the Open Studios – Teaching Models, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation builds on its educational legacy. Students and teachers from universities, art academies, and educational initiatives are invited to work in the historic Bauhaus workshops, developing and applying contemporary models of creative education. Themes shift between the past and the present, taking their inspiration from both the historic Bauhaus and contemporary debates on the training of designers.

The preliminary course module of the Open Studios addresses the question of what significance the teaching models applied in the preliminary course at the historic Bauhaus have for the present day. Using selected student works taken from the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation’s collection, various historic assignments on the subjects of material, knowledge, and humankind are examined and transferred in a speculative manner. In this way, participants experience Bauhaus teaching in a multi-sensory way, and can compare it to current approaches in design education.

The preliminary course module can be conducted on site at the Bauhaus Building or digitally.

Language
English or German
Duration
2 to 7 days
Target group
International student groups in the fields of architecture or design, cultural studies or comparable degree programmes
Conditions
The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation provides a suitable room in the Bauhaus building free of charge and offers individually tailored academic support for the programme. Travelling, accommodation and material costs for the studio are to be borne by the participants themselves or financed via their university.
Provider
Academy of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
Application period
possible all year round for university lecturers
Period of time
Spring and autumn

The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation welcomes applications for the programme. Please send your application or questions to: klaus@bauhaus-dessau.de

Prof. Regina Bittner, PhD
Project leadership
bittner@bauhaus-dessau.de

Katja Klaus
Research associate
klaus@bauhaus-dessau.de

Master

The modern understanding of design was nowhere more manifest than at the Bauhaus Dessau. Mistrusting outdated traditions of design, it replaced them with materials research and new relationships between technology, science, and craft skills. This basic approach of design through research is an appropriate starting point for interrogating the concepts of knowledge and future that are associated with design today. In the CO-OP design research degree programme, the concepts, approaches, and effects of design as a construct of diverse cultural, social, ecological, and political contexts and as a form of knowledge production are examined from various perspectives. This includes thinking about radical epistemological shifts in the self-understanding of designers and architects, critique, gaining distance from and analysing hegemonic Western design ideologies, and attempting to situate them in the context of contemporary discussions and practices of decolonisation.

The one-year English language Master’s programme is an academic collaboration between the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences, and the Humboldt University of Berlin. Consisting of the three main modules Design as Research, Design as Education, and Design as Projection, the degree programme incorporates different formats of learning and teaching to foster exchanges between disciplines, working methods, and fields. In the second semester, students work on a Master’s thesis. The range of topics covered enables students to make contributions to international Bauhaus research. The programme is intended both as a preliminary step on the way to studying for a doctorate and as theoretical preparation for applied design research and practice.

Programme: COOP Design Research

Qualification
Master of Science
Language
English, thesis can also be written in German
Duration
two semesters (60 ECTS)
Contents
Design research
Target group
international students
Costs
tuition fees EUR 1,250.00 per semester
Admission requirements
Bachelor (240 ECTS) or Master’s degree in architecture or design, cultural studies, or comparable study courses or at least one year’s work experience
Provider
Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences, in collaboration with the Humboldt University of Berlin
Application period
16 December 2023 to 15 May 2024
Study period
1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025

You can apply either via Uni-Assist or via the SSC portal of Anhalt University of Applied Sciences. If you have any questions regarding your application, please contact: info@coopdesignresearch.de

Prof. Regina Bittner, PhD
Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
bittner@bauhaus-dessau.de

Prof. Stephan Pinkau Graduate Engineer
Anhalt University of Applied Sciences
info@coopdesignresearch.de

Cooperation partners

Study Rooms

Every year, over a hundred people from all over the world are directly involved in the various educational programmes of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation: The Bauhaus Study Rooms offer graduates of the Bauhaus programmes an opportunity to network and at the same time address an interested local and international public. They create temporary transversal learning spaces in which the conditions of collective knowledge production can be explored and experienced. In experimental workshops, round tables and tours, current issues of the foundation are discussed from the perspective of the various programmes.

What comes after industry? How can structural change be organised in a socially and ecologically just way? The Bauhaus Study Rooms will take place in 2024 in cooperation with the Festival OSTEN in Dessau and Bitterfeld-Wolfen and are dedicated to the post-industrial conditions of design.

Study Rooms 2024
After Industry. Productivities of Transition
Friday Group: Art + Environment
Study Rooms meets Friday Group

Vera Lauf, PhD
Research associate
lauf@bauhaus-dessau.de

Schools of Departure

Under the title Schools of Departure, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation has developed a digital atlas that brings together research on the global interrelationships of Bauhaus pedagogy with reform projects in design teaching in the 20th century. Initial case studies on universities in Brazil, Albania, Sweden, Great Britain and the former Yugoslavia were developed in the course of a one-year project funded by the Ministry for Infrastructure and Digital Affairs of the State of Saxony-Anhalt. With funding from the Federal Cultural Foundation, this digital atlas will be expanded with new modules and functions in 2022 under the title Travelling Concepts: Art and Design Education Beyond the Bauhaus.

Digital atlas of Bauhaus
(Project-Website)

In a series of essays, interviews with contemporary witnesses, photographic and film documentation of archive materials, international school experiments are presented and mapped in the network. Modern mapping techniques create a dynamic spatial visualisation of data sets on art and design schools after the Bauhaus. They illustrate to users in which way, in which institutional forms and in which particular local or geopolitical context aspects of Bauhaus pedagogy were translated and thereby further developed. The design and programming of the platform was the responsibility of the “Offshore Studio” from Zurich. A graphic user interface was developed that is characterised by an experimental, at the same time memorable and intuitive design.

Consequently, the project can open up entirely new narratives on the cultural impact of the Bauhaus as a pedagogical model. Instead of assuming the “influence” of the Bauhaus and the Bauhaus as a “centre” with movement to the non-European “periphery”, the digital atlas makes the manifold interconnections visible.

Schools of Departure is aimed at students, teachers, academics, curators and Bauhaus researchers from Germany and abroad as well as at a general audience interested in culture. In addition to the open application on the online platform, the atlas will also be used in the educational programmes of the Academy of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (Bauhaus Open Studios, Bauhaus Master Programme Coop Design Research, Bauhaus Lab). Within the framework of existing and future project collaborations, external young academics and students can also be invited on an ad hoc basis to edit content, supplement their own research and curate data material using the visualisation tool in order to generate thematic online presentations for the digital atlas. Thanks to funding from the German Federal Cultural Foundation, the digital atlas will be supplemented by two editions of an e-journal as well as further educational modules.

The project Schools of Departure was funded by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Digital Affairs of Saxony-Anhalt as part of the Digital Agenda for the State of Saxony-Anhalt. Travelling Concepts: Art and Design Education Beyond the Bauhaus is being developed as part of “dive in. Programm für digitale Interaktionen” of the German Federal Cultural Foundation, funded by the Minister of State for Culture and the Media (BKM) in the NEUSTART KULTUR programme.

sponsored by:

Katja Klaus
Project managers
klaus@bauhaus-dessau.de

Philipp Sack
Research associate
sack@bauhaus-dessau.de