Bauhaus Taschenbuch 27:
Doors of Learning.
Microcosms of a Future South Africa

In 1988, a seminar was held at the Bauhaus Dessau as part of the UN-HABITAT programme that dealt with questions of housing construction in the ‘developing countries’. A prefabricated building system developed by GDR architects was presented here, which was used for the first time at an education and development centre of the African National Congress (ANC) in Dakawa, Tanzania. The educational centres that have been set up in rural Tanzania since the 1970s with the support of international solidarity movements were learning and living spaces for people who had fled the brutal racial segregation regime in South Africa.

The publication focuses on why education was the key to building a new democratic society. Based on archival research, eyewitness reports and field studies, facets of everyday life and learning in these temporary communities are reflected. The story of these transnational encounters in Tanzania also challenges previous Cold War historiographies of the Eastern Bloc’s global engagement by giving voice to the entanglements of ‘global socialism’ with decolonial educational movements and societal transformations in Africa.

Edited by:
Bauhaus Dessau Foundation

Texts by:
Regina Bittner, Essi Lamberg, Lucas Rehnmann, Esther Mbibo, Nokubekezela Mchunu, Igor Bloch, Michalina Musielak, Jordan Rowe, Joyce Lam

Graphic design:
Anne Meyer based on a concept by HORT, Berlin

Layout:
148 pages, numerous black and white and coloured illustrations, softcover

Language:
English

Spector Books, Leipzig
2023

ISBN 978-3-95905-7 (en)

9,90 € book trade
7,90 € Designshop Bauhaus Dessau