The Bauhaus as a church?

When the folding sliding walls between the auditorium and canteen in the Bauhaus building are open, the resulting space, which Walter Gropius described as a “festive area”, looks almost like a hint of a nave.

Can this be understood as an allusion to a church building planned almost on the same site in 1889? Is this perhaps a late reference to the claim formulated in the founding manifesto for the Bauhaus in 1919 to create an architectural “symbol of a new faith to come”? Did questions of faith still play a role at all for the Bauhaus, which manifested itself in Dessau in an emphatically rational and industrially orientated way, and if so, which ones?

The artist Kang Sunkoo and Torsten Blume from the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation will discuss this question and the extent to which religious dimensions can possibly inspire new ways of thinking and looking at the Bauhaus.

Language: German