Bauhaus Dream-house—Modernity and Globalization (review)

Research about the Bauhaus has mainly emphasized art-historical scholarship based on formal and empirical approaches. Bauhaus Dream-house is the first book on the Bauhaus that presents the institution through the fascinating lens of critical social theory. The author examines its institutional formation as well as the spread and influence of its ideas worldwide. Putting the Bauhaus into its daily context allows the reader to de-mystify it by realizing the extent of its challenges. The impressive tenacity and creativity of its leaders in keeping the school open and disseminating its ideas is also covered.

The Bauhaus was both an educational establishment and a business with a development strategy, a combination that is very familiar to us today but was less common almost 100 years ago when initiated by this institution. The book starts by contextualizing the birth of the Bauhaus. It then focuses on the life of the Bauhaus itself, explaining how social, economic and political pressures influenced its original ideals and how it responded to the former. The last chapter traces its legacy, looking at the dissemination of its curriculum and the impact of its thinking on cultural identity and modernity.

The first part of the book, "Histories and Theories," relates the history of architecture, design and art education that led to the creation of the Bauhaus. This survey starts with the medieval guild and progresses on to the late 18th century, when new institutions were created in opposition to the expensive and "out-of-touch" classical learning, an approach that prevailed at that time. In Germany, the Werbund tried to integrate art and industry, romanticizing the guild model of uniting imagination and production. It aimed to ennoble products with art on the principle that mass production can lead to quality product and that quality of industrial goods improves when designed by artists. Commodity design at the Bauhaus emerged from this history.

For those interested, Chapter 2 focuses on the theoretical framework that informs the historical narration. Interestingly, the author explains that change is brought about through fantasy, which helps construct new objects and practices. This often occurs during periods of drama (eco-crisis, war). Fantasy is essential in capitalism because it gives "meaning" to mass-produced commodities. And the Bauhaus did harness fantasy to represent socio-cultural change. It is heralded not only as a beacon of artistic, design and architectural modernism but also as the epitome of modernity. Hence, its history is also synonymous of that of the Weimar Republic, as it became part of identity experiments by the new nation-state.

Part 2, "Weimar Republic," gives the reader some insight into the life of the school and its challenges. Founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius, who fused the Weimar Academy of Fine Arts and the Arts and Craft School, the new institution was located in the provincial cities of Weimar (1919-1924), Dessau (1925-1932) and Berlin (1933) and had three consecutive directors: Walter Gropius, Hans Meyer and Mies van der Rohe. Being an open admission school, it employed its Basic Course as a gatekeeper. This course offered formal and technical education but no history. The Bauhaus tried to straddle academy, technical and craft education, adopting during its first period medieval ideals to integrate them.

The First World War led to a rejection of history and the creation of a collective identity—a space where people acquire embodied cultural capital, the habitus. The latter became the focus of critique and playful transformation. Gropius recognized the local political consequences of the Bauhaus's initial rejection of social and gender traditions and gradually re-established social conformity. As economic stability returned in 1924, the Bauhaus increasingly embraced a more conventional corporeal identity with its growing focus on standardization, mass production and collaboration with industry. In addition, design being seen as key to the appeal of German products in international competition, the Bauhaus was under pressure in two respects. On the one hand, it was an educational institution in...