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

„The Institut 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 Institut of Environment. The Experience of a Utopia. 1969-1976)

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.

Based on 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.

Applications are open to international young professionals and postgraduates from the fields of architecture and design as well as young curators and design researchers. The eight participants will be selected by an international jury.

Symposium and exhibition

On behalf of the environment: Pedagogies of unrest

Exhibition
9 August 2024 – 21 April 2025, Bauhaus Building

The Institut de l’Environnement was an interdisciplinary school that existed in Paris from 1969 to 1971. Founded in the heated climate of worldwide student protests and growing awareness of the threat to the environment, this research and training centre sought to redefine teaching methods and the role of research in architecture and design.

The participants of Bauhaus Lab 2024 explored both the teaching and research activities of the institute and the cultural context of the time. The result is an exhibition that looks at the fragmented history of the Institut de l’Environnement along the lines of the question ‘What is the environment?’. Like a common thread, this question links three thematic clusters of installations: signs of protest deal with the cultural context of the institute. A series of posters establishes links to cultural and political events. The paper archive curtain offers insights into everyday teaching and research at the institute and symbolises the overwhelming wealth of archive material. The façade forms a membrane, accentuating an intermediate space that relates to the façade of the school, but whose materiality also thematises the external impact of this controversial institute.

On behalf of the environment: Pedagogies of unrest is a collective project and was developed by an international group of architects, designers, curators and researchers from the Bauhaus Lab 2024 as part of the Transcultural Modernism Studies programme.

Lab exhibition, Bauhaus building, 2024
© Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, photo: Meyer, Thomas / OSKREUZ

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

On behalf of the environment: Pedagogies of unrest

Exhibition 9 August 2024 – 21 April 2025, Bauhaus Building

Exhibition
9 August 2024 – 21 April 2025, Bauhaus Building