bauhaus

art as life

learning resource

Front cover:
Edmund Collein, Extension to the Prellerhaus.
From 9 Jahre Bauhaus: Eine Chronik (9 years
Bauhaus: a Chronicle), a set of works made
for Walter Gropius on his departure from
the school, 1928. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin.
Photograph: Markus Hawlik Ursula
Kirsten-Collein

contents
at a glance 
the exhibition map
key words 
key people

3
3
5
7

introduction to the exhibition

introduction to the learning resource 
a creative revolution
why the bauhaus still matters

9
10
12
13

imagining utopia 
1. Activity: Make Your Manifesto
2. Activity: Reflecting on Utopia
3. Activity: Reorganising Reality

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the school that changed everything

4. Activity: Shadow Maps
5. Activity: The Invisible Tool
6. Activity: Picturing the Utopia an Object
was Designed For
7. Activity: Make a Celebration
8. Activity: Make a Gift

17

unlearning

21

experiment and play

9. Activity: Make a Sculpture of Contrasts

23

going back to basics

25

a. citizens of the universe 

10. Activity: What Voice Do Letters Speak In?
11. Activity: The Bare Necessities of Type
12. Activity: Making Masks

25

Farkas Molnr, Design for a single-family house, 1922

Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin
Photograph: Markus Hawlik

b. speaking without words 

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13. Activity: Take the Colour-Shape Test
14. Activity: Hearing Pictures and Seeing Sound
15. Activity: Take a Line for a Walk
16. Activity: A World in a Painting
17. Activity: The Writing on the Wall
18. Activity: Words Without Meaning
19. Activity: Colour Light Play

c. form = function 
20. Activity: Remaking the Game

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curriculum links
places to visit 

37
38

at a glance

lower level

upper level

17 18

13

1 2

10 11

16 15

6 7 12

14

7 8

4
20

19

the exhibition map

1. Activity: Make Your Manifesto
2. Activity: Reflecting on Utopia
3. Activity: Reorganising Reality
4. Activity: Shadow Maps
5. Activity: The Invisible Tool

3

6. Activity: Picturing the Utopia

an Object was Designed For

10. Activity: What Voice do

Letters Speak in?

14. Activity: Hearing Pictures

and Seeing Sound

18. Activity: Words Without

Meaning

7. Activity: Make a Celebration

11. Activity: The Bare Necessities

of Type

15. Activity: Take a Line for

a Walk

19. Activity: Colour Light Play

12. Activity: Making Masks

16. Activity: A World in

a Painting

8. Activity: Make a Gift

9. Activity: Make a Sculpture of
Contrasts

13. Activity: Take the ColourShape Test

17. Activity: The Writing

on the Wall

20. Activity: Remaking

the Game

The activities can be done

at home, work, school or
college, before or after your
visit to Bauhaus: Art as Life.
Many of the activities refer
to works in the exhibition,
although please do not carry
out practical work in the
gallery itself.
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key words
Avant-garde meaning at the vanguard
of culture, avant garde refers to the pioneering
artistic movements of early twentieth-century
modernism. The most influential avant-garde
movements for the Bauhaus were Expressionism,
Constructivism and Dada.
Bauhaus the name of the school, but also its
creative and educational philosophy, methods
and styles. The Bauhaus was founded in the city
of Weimar in Germany in 1919. It moved to
the city of Dessau in 1925 and then to Berlin in
1932, where it was closed down by the National
Socialists in 1933.
Bauhauslers staff and student members of
the Bauhaus. This term may include the families
of the staff who also lived at the Bauhaus. The
programme of public events for this exhibition
includes talks by those who lived at the Bauhaus
as children.
Friends of the Bauhaus The Bauhaus
pioneered a new model of a modern democratic
university based on collaboration between
disciplines. It drew important supporters who lent
their name to its cause by officially becoming
Friends of the Bauhaus. Albert Einstein was
among them.

Gesamkunstwerk total work of art

in which all art forms are integrated.
Pedagogy the philosophy, strategies and
methods of a particular style of teaching.
Preliminary course every student, regardless
of existing skill or training, needed to pass through
this course in creative experiment before going
on to a specialist workshop to train in making
artworks and products. The preliminary course is
also referred to as the basic or foundation course.
Unlearning the Bauhaus pedagogical style
that aimed to replace received knowledge with
knowledge gained from experiment and
personal experience.
Workshop each student who had passed
through the preliminary course then joined a
specialist workshop to train for three more years.
Each workshop was taught by a leading avantgarde artist in collaboration with a technical or
craft specialist. The workshops included weaving,
wood, metal and ceramics.

All Bauhaus students were required to work through the segments of the
curriculum wheel, passing from the basic (preliminary) course to the vital
core at its centre contributing to the total building.
Walter Gropius, Diagram of the Bauhaus curriculum, 1922
Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin DACS 2012

key people
bauhaus directors
Walter Gropius
(1883 Berlin, Germany 1969
Massachusetts, USA)
The ultimate goal of all art is the building!
The ornamentation of the building was
once the main purpose of the visual arts,
and they were considered indispensable
parts of the great building
The founding Director of the Bauhaus whose
manifesto of 1919 set the vision and curriculum
for the school. His influences remained
throughout the duration of the school.
Hannes Meyer
(1889 Basel 1954 Lugano, Switzerland)

As creative autonomy was important at the

Bauhaus, there were as many education methods
as there were masters. In the first years of the
Bauhaus, rather than refer to teachers and pupils,
the terms apprentices, journeymen and masters/
master craftsmen were used, with exams at each
stage of progression. As a result, a number of
outstanding journeymen became masters.
Josef Albers
(1888 Bottrop, Germany 1976 Connecticut, USA)
(Bauhaus years 1920 1933)
A furniture designer and educator, Albers
was initially a student of Ittens basic course
in Weimar, before teaching the preliminary
course in Dessau from 1923. He soon became
master of the glass workshop, which he
taught until the Bauhaus closed in 1933.

The peoples needs instead of the need for luxury!

Herbert Bayer
(1900 Haag, Austria 1985 Santa Barbara, USA)
(Bauhaus years 1921/2 1928)

Gropius appointed Meyer as Director of

the Bauhaus, Dessau in 1928, where his
communist-leaning leadership was effective
and productive although he was removed
from office in 1930 for political reasons.

A Bauhaus apprentice for four years, Bayer

was appointed director of the printing and
advertising workshop in 1925. He designed
the famous universal typeface of simple
looking letters that is so familiar to us now.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

(1886 Aachen, Germany 1969 Chicago, USA)

Marianne Brandt
(1893 Chemnitz 1983 Kirchberg, Germany)
(Bauhaus years 1924 1929)

Appointed to replace Meyer in 1930, Mies

educational style was traditional architectual
training rather than the forms of learning that had
prospered at the Bauhaus. Despite his careful
political postioning and moving the school to
Berlin, he was unable to save the Bauhaus from
closure in 1933.

A product designer, Brandt studied in MoholyNagys metal workshop and became an expert
in technical artistry from lighting experiments
to functional tea sets. She designed the lighting
fixtures at the Bauhaus School in Dessau and led
the metal workshop in 1928.
Marcel Breuer
(1902 Pcs, Hungary 1981 New York, USA)
(Bauhaus years 1920/1 1928)
Breuer was a student of Gropius carpentry
programme until 1924, when he came to lead
the workshop until 1928. His tubular steel club
chair (1925) remains an icon of Bauhaus design
as it was the first chair of its kind for domestic use.

Lyonel Feininger
(1871 1956 New York, USA)
(Bauhaus years 1919 1933)

Lszl Moholy-Nagy
(1895 Bcsborsd, Hungary 1946 Chicago, USA)
(Bauhaus years 1923 1928)

An established artist in Weimar, Feiningers

woodcut image of a cathedral is the main
illustration of Gropius founding manifesto for the
Bauhaus in 1919. One of the schools first masters,
he directed the printmaking workshop until 1925
and his children were also students at the school.

Moholy-Nagy directed the preliminary course and

metal workshop for five years from 1923, while
his own work focused on experimental film and
typography. He published a series of Bauhaus
books to promote their ideas, which included
salient publications by both Klee and Kandinsky.

Johannes Itten
(1888 Sderen-Linden 1967 Zrich, Switzerland)
(Bauhaus years 1919 1923)

Gunta Stlzl
(1897 Mnchen, Germany 1983 Zrich,
Switzerland)
(Bauhaus years 1919 1931)

As one of the first Bauhaus masters Itten made

a significant contribution to the Bauhaus. He
devised and taught the preliminary course, as
well as directing a majority of the workshops.
He is said to have had a monk-like presence
because of his religious conviction.
Wassily Kandinsky
(1866 Moscow, Russia 1944 Paris, France)
(Bauhaus years 1922 1933)
Kandinsky was a master of painting at the
Bauhaus for most of its existence, teaching
workshops on wall painting then free painting.
From 1922 to 32 he taught the abstract
form and analytical drawing component of
the preliminary course and his well-known
paintings remain influential today.
Paul Klee
(1879 Mnchenbuchsee 1940 Muralto,
Switzerland)
(Bauhaus years 1920 1931)

Stlzl began as an apprentice on the preliminary

course, glass and wall painting workshops. As
a skilled weaver, she was appointed master
of form for the Bauhaus weaving workshop
in 1925, and directed the workshop from 192631 the only female master at the Bauhaus.
Her graphic textiles designs remain influential
and still look contemporary to this day.
Oskar Schlemmer
(1888 Stuttgart 1943 Baden-Baden)
(Bauhaus years 1921 1929)
Schlemmer is perhaps best known for his Bauhaus
stage work including extraordinary costumes
and avant-garde performances. He was one
of the first Bauhaus masters, initially leading the
wall painting, stone sculpture and life drawing
classes. He contributed much to the important
Bauhaus exhibition of 1923 and his ethos was
centered on the theme of the human being.

Klee was director of a number of the workshops

over the years, including book binding, free
sculpture and artistic design, design theory
for weaving and elemental design theory in
the preliminary course from 1921 to 30. His
playful approach to creative work is evident
both in his celebrated painting career as well
as the hand puppets made for his son, Felix.

an introduction to the exhibition

an introduction to the learning resource

Bauhaus: Art as Life explores the worlds most famous modern art
and design school. It is the biggest Bauhaus survey staged in the UK
in over 40 years. From its avant-garde arts and crafts beginnings,
the Bauhaus shifted towards a more radical model of learning
uniting art and technology. A driving force in the development of
Modernism, it sought to change society in the aftermath of World
War I, to find a new way of living. This major Barbican Art Gallery
exhibition presents the pioneering artistic production that makes up
the schools turbulent fourteen-year history from 1919 to 1933 and
delves into the subjects at the heart of the Bauhaus art, design,
people, society and culture.

The Bauhaus school encouraged its students to be independent in

thought and spirit, and to enrich their whole life through creative
experiment. Inspired by them, the ideas here are designed to help
you make your own way through Bauhaus: Art as Life, and devise a
self-led tour for yourself, friends or students.

Bringing together more than 400 works, the exhibition features a

rich array of painting, sculpture, architecture, film, photography,
furniture, graphics, product design, textiles, ceramics and theatre
by Bauhaus masters including Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer,
Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Walter Gropius, Wassily
Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Hannes Meyer, Ludwig Mies van
der Rohe, Lszl Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer, Joost
Schmidt, Gunta Stlzl as well as students such as Anni Albers,
Marianne Brandt, T. Lux Feininger, Kurt Kranz, Xanti
Schawinsky and Alma Buscher.
Bauhaus: Art as Life is a Barbican Art Gallery exhibition produced
in co-operation with Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin/Museum fr Gestaltung,
Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau and Klassik Stiftung Weimar.

The exhibition is set out loosely in order of historical events, and

grouped by connected ideas and themes. This resource focuses
on creative learning ideas, most of which you can explore through
multiple examples. For that reason the order of this resource doesnt
directly follow the order youll encounter artworks in the gallery.
For a map of the exhibition that shows the location of the artworks
discussed here, see At a Glance on page 3.
This learning resource sets out key Bauhaus ideas: reorganising
reality, unlearning, stripping back to basic principles and
celebrating life. The schools approach centred on unlocking the
creative potential of individuals so that they could work at their
best on collaborative projects. Their ideas changed our world. The
discussion and activities that follow are designed to help us explore
whether Bauhaus ideas still have value and power for us.
Emma Ridgway, Creative Learning curator, and Cathy Haynes,
independent curator and educator (writers)

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a creative revolution
Can you imagine a different way of life in the
future? How do you want things to go? What do
you want to make happen?
We live in a time of great transformation and
uncertainty. Right now a revolution in education
is gathering force. Public cultural institutions are
placing learning events on an equal platform to
the arts and the objects they show, lead educators
are calling more loudly for creative teaching
methods and innovations in digital technology
are giving us new ways to educate ourselves.
This is in response to dramatic changes taking
place in technology, economics, politics and the
environment. Each of us has a role in responding
to the challenges that these changes bring. Our
creativity is the most powerful resource weve got.
Learning creatively throughout our life, not just
at school, university or work sparks our ideas
and develops our skills for helping to shape the
future. If you think the world is perfect already,
stop reading now. If not, are you ready to be part
of a creative revolution?
Otto Umbehr (Umbo), Josef Albers and students in a group critique at the Bauhaus Dessau, 192829
The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation
Phyllis Umbehr/Galerie Kicken Berlin/DACS 2012

To learn creatively is to actively draw lessons from

the culture thats around us. It is to be critically
aware of the stories that are being told in the
arts and in the media. It is also to be self-directed
in what we learn not to be told what to think
or do, but to learn for ourselves by questioning
assumptions and creating new things. To adapt
to the changing world, there are ideas well need
to unlearn things we might have been taught
that could be outdated, too rigid, or comfortable
but stuck. Unlearning is an art-school skill
designed to help us experience the world afresh.
It complements expertise and mastery and is
against learning by heart. To unlearn involves reimagining things as if starting from the beginning,
to strip away influences and habits of mind, then
to experience things in the present, reflect on how
they are and imagine how they could be different.

In Europe at that time, high art was considered

separate from everyday life, and largely reserved
for the rich. Industry and capitalism were taking
over from craftsmanship and manual skill.
Gropius believed that to change things, creative
workers needed to learn in a new way. He was
active in the education debates of his day and
was influenced by the English artist and activist
William Morris (1834 96), whose idea that
the arts could significantly improve peoples
experience of life is still influential today. When
thinking about combining crafts and artistry,
Morris looked back to the mediaeval guild system,
where craftsmen worked together on improving
their skills and joint creative production. The past
is not better than the present, but recognising
whats changed, and why, can sometimes help
us to imagine a better future. This is long term
thinking, which propels revolutionary ideas.
The Bauhaus and its creative education methods
teach us that we need to be highly aware of our
present environment and circumstances before
we can improve them. To continually renew our
understanding of the present, we must keep
unlearning the old ideas that we no longer need.
We can do this by asking questions about the
deep assumptions lying beneath our beliefs and
actions. We can do this through play, experiment
and gathering experience for ourselves, without
following a predetermined plan. Learning
creatively in these ways is not traditional
education, where knowledge is learned by rote.
It is a continuous form of learning that we can do
for ourselves alone or with others and we can
do it all our life.

Imagination isnt confined to children, artists or

visionaries. We can each be rich in imagination
and take responsibility for how we interpret the
past and shape the present. Those who drive
change do it by imagining and believing in an
alternative future reality. Walter Gropius (1883
1969), founder of the Bauhaus School in 1919,
had a vision for how the arts painting, sculpture,
design, theatre, weaving, architecture should
work together to improve the way we all live.
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why the bauhaus still matters

The Bauhaus was an attempt to make a new life
for everyone at a time when the old certainties of
community, work and belief had been shattered.
After World War I, society was divided and in
conflict. Young people, especially, faced the
future alternatives of unemployment or grim and
unrewarding work. Workers short on time, energy
and resources had been reduced to buying poorquality mass-produced goods and entertainment
rather than creating them for themselves.
Like the slapstick character that Charlie Chaplin
plays in Modern Times (1921), the creative spirit
of the worker was becoming trapped in the
machine. As the English philosopher Bertrand
Russell argued in the 1930s, the pressure in
industrial society to measure every activity by how
productive we are reduces us to machines: without
the space and time to pursue curiosity and play
for our own pleasure throughout our lives, we
cant flourish or fulfill our human potential.
But Russell saw industry as the way to free us
all, because it could reduce working hours. He
hoped it would liberate us from a life of passive
consumption into one of creative action. The
Bauhaus, too, saw technology as potentially
liberating. It aimed to merge art, science and
technology to transform the possibilities for a
better collective life.
Back in 1919, under such overwhelming
circumstances, many people may have felt that the
task of changing the state of things was just too
big. But rather than feel defeated, the Bauhaus
transformed the spirit of its age. It turned art
and design into philosophy and social action. It
made creativity the medium through which we
adapt and shape reality, rather than just record
it. And it saw that the urgent challenges of its
time demanded collaboration and conversation
between people from all backgrounds and
specialists from all fields.

outside our present and looking back in. It lets

us see what else might have been and still might
be, rather than feeling tugged along by forces
that we think are outside our control. Letting our
imaginations roam history for ideas can help
us expand our vision for how we might actively
change the present to create a better future.
The Bauhaus project remains unfinished. The
National Socialist militia forced the school to close
in 1933. Many of its staff and students were under
attack and left the country. They took Bauhaus
ideas with them and gave them new life in other
places. The exuberant potential of these ideas
has yet to be fully explored. We can still take
inspiration from them. But does that mean we
should simply imitate the Bauhaus style?
Rather than looking for the Bauhaus spirit in
tubular-steel chairs and white cuboid buildings,
were more likely to find it in todays online
collaborative economy of sharing knowledge
online, the rise in educational gaming and the
grassroots use of social networking sites that have
inspired nonviolent protest around the world.

T. Lux Feininger, Sport at the Bauhaus/Jump over the Bauhaus, c. 1927

Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin Estate T. Lux Feininger

The exhibition invites us to imagine life at the

Bauhaus. This is not about indulging nostalgia
and simply admiring the past for its own sake,
but seeing its ideas as still alive with potential.
In the 1930s the German philosopher Walter
Benjamin encouraged us to engage deeply with
those moments of the past that resonate with our
own. Imagining the past and empathising with
the people who lived it gives us a way of standing
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imagining utopia

1. Activity: Make Your Manifesto

What do you call something when there isnt

already a name for it? How do you find the words
to bring something entirely new into being?

To a greater or lesser extent, all of us live under

the direction of a manifesto. Each ruling political
partys manifesto shapes policy and law on
everything from how and what we are taught at
school to our right to copy and share ideas. This
exercise is about creating the manifesto that you
want to live under, which may differ from the ones
we have been given. It is a big task and takes time.
It can be done alone, in pairs or a group. And it
can be returned to and reshaped again and again
in response to changing ideas and reality.

When the visionary architect Walter Gropius

was invited in 1919 to merge the Academy of
Fine Arts and the School of Applied Arts in
Weimar, he could have done the usual thing
and called it an Academy of Art and Design. But
Gropiuss masterstroke was to express his vision in
a single word that could be applied to everything
from its mass-produced products to its education
methods to its college band. The word Bauhaus
is made up of bau, which means building in the
sense of creating, and haus, which means both
house and spiritual home. In one powerful word,
Gropius had given form to his radical vision for
merging all artistic fields and integrating them
with everyday life through the collaborative
activity of building.
Gropius first introduced the word Bauhaus in
1919 in his manifesto for the school. The manifesto
begins with a visual expression of Gropiuss ideals
by Lyonel Feininger. Inside, on page two, Gropius
writes a text in response to the image, calling for
a new building of a new future, which will be
everything in one structure. Then on page three
he sets out his plan for how this is to be achieved.
Other manifestos were created at the school.
One made by students in 1922 contained a line
that the Bauhaus would adopt as its guiding
mantra: Art and Technology: A New Unity. The
Bauhaus manifestos were attempts to bring the
schools vision into reality. They were expressions
of a utopia, an ideal world of the future. To
imagine such a new world, we need to examine
and understand the one we live in now. This is why
so much of the work at the Bauhaus was based
on testing ideas through experience. The most
powerful utopian ideas are based on what might
really be possible.

Gropiuss enduring question was How do

we want to live? How would you answer?
What do you want to put in your manifesto?
A manifesto is a way of getting other people
excited about your idea for how things could
be better. It is a powerful way of explaining your
ideas and persuading others to get involved too.
To make your manifesto, first work out what
you want to change about everyday life. Start
by making a list of things that you think should
change, for example, I dont think people should
fight each other or Everyone in the world should
have enough to eat. Dont be put off by the belief
that your dream of change is too big. Throughout
history, from votes for women in political elections,
the end of apartheid in South Africa to the
legalisation of gay marriage in some US states,
people have changed the world in ways that were
previously thought impossible.
After youve worked out what you want to change,
decide how youre going to persuade others
to join you in making it happen. Here are three
strategies for how you could do that. Choose the
one you think will be the most effective way to win
others support.
a. Write your manifesto in the style of protest
banners and T-shirt slogans. For example,
no more war or end poverty. These
messages are powerful, short and direct but
dont leave space to explain how to make
change happen in detail.
b. Make a poetic, philosophical appeal to
peoples imaginations for how things could
change, inspired by the civil rights leader
Martin Luther King who began his worldchanging speech with I had a dream

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c. Write a pamphlet like Gropiuss. Start by

imagining what the future would look like if
the changes you want to make to the world
actually happened.

Why do you think that is? What happens to

utopian visions once you try to make them real?
Is it worth trying to build a utopia even if you dont
know whether youll succeed?

Draw a picture of your ideal world and

describe it in words in a way that will inspire
others to get excited about making it happen.
Before you start, ask yourself: If your nation or
town was organised around these ideas, what
would it look like? What would the buildings be
like? What do people do there? Does everyone
eat together? Are there schools? What makes
them better than schools today? And so on.

What do you believe is stopping you from trying

to change your world? Who can you ask to help
you? How can you let them know you want their
help and encourage them to believe in your
vision?

Once youve worked out what it is and how

to make it happen, give your vision a name.
Make up an inspiring name for it if the right
word doesnt already exist (as Gropius did with
Bauhaus). Remember, the right name will draw
others to look at the manifesto. An unappealing
name will draw less interest.
Describe how youre going to make this world
happen by asking yourself what everyone
would have to do. For example, to end poverty,
would you make rich countries send food to
those in famine, or would you have them help
those countries grow their own crops? What
are the benefits and pitfalls of your strategies?
How can you get round them?
d. Finally, ask other people to read your
manifesto. Do they agree with you? Ask them to
explain their response to it. Do they have ideas
to add to yours? Use debate and conversation
in this way to develop your ideas and refine
your manifesto.

3. Activity: Reorganising Reality

An exercise in collage-making based on analysis
of examples in the exhibition.
Collage is a technique that can be used to
question how things are. This is done by
reorganising newspaper and magazine images
to question the truth of the stories presented in the
press. See Marianne Brandts collage Its a Matter
of Taste, for example. The picture is a comment
on the belief that women choose certain kinds of
work because it suits their taste. Brandts ironic
combination of title and image exposes that they
werent given a choice.
Look closely at the collages in the exhibition.
Examine how the artists have taken pictures from
the magazines and newspapers of the day and
reorganised them.
How are the different pieces placed in new
relationship and tension with each other? What
is the effect of different styles of images being
placed together?

2. Activity: Reflecting on Utopia

What meaning does that give them? For example,

does tension in the composition point to political
tension in real life?

A discussion and reflection exercise in the gallery

that complements the manifesto-making activity
above. They can be done in either order.

Are there lines of direction in the composition?

What effect do they have? For example, do they
give a sense of movement?

Look out for examples of the Bauhaus identity

in the exhibition. What do they say about the
Bauhaus? How do they change over time? What
does that suggest about how the Bauhaus school
changed?

Make a collage from images that youve cut from

magazines and papers to make a picture story
that shows something that concerns you about life
today, or that shows how life ought to be.

The Bauhaus manifesto gives a vision of a

utopia, that is, an imaginary world designed to
show how our present could be better. The word
utopia means both good place and no place.
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the school that changed

everything
Gropius had a radical vision for what art and
artists could be. The old art academies had kept
a strict partition between the fine arts (sculpture
and painting) and applied arts (architecture
and design), and between theory and practice.
But at the Bauhaus, painters and sculptors were
encouraged to work in the fields of architecture,
textiles, theatre, dance, film, furniture, graphics,
advertising and photography. Gropius was
inspired by the idea, taken from opera and
theatre, of the total work of art, where all art
forms work together. For him, making a building
was the ultimate way to create a total artwork.
Much school activity was directed towards the
joint project of actually making a building.
Whats more, this building was an experiment in
expanding human potential. The total artwork
wouldnt stop at integrating art forms. It would
merge art and life too. All the Bauhauslers
students and teachers cooperated to transform
everyday existence by redesigning everything in
their new community from the floor plan to the
doorknobs.
It wasnt until the Bauhaus relocated in 1925 from
Weimar to the city of Dessau that it could finally
build its own purpose-designed community.
The school building was constructed and fitted
by the Bauhauslers. It included a canteen, a
theatre, houses for students and faculty to live
in and a flat roof that accommodated games
and performances. We might expect so many
hands to make a patchwork of a result. But the
Russian writer Ilya Ehrenburg wrote that the new
Bauhaus building seemed cast of one piece
like a persistent thought. A Bauhausler later
remembered that when one of the woven textiles
especially designed for the directors office was
later changed for another, the room lost its feeling
of completion.

living in utopia

4. Activity: Shadow Maps

5. Activity: The Invisible Tool

The Bauhaus buildings were designed to enable

better ways of life. The main buildings had big
sociable corridors. The Masters Houses included
shared communal spaces between families. These
buildings brought to life the modernist architect
Le Corbusiers influential idea of the house as a
machine for living. This replaced the industrial
machine, which limited the potential of its workers,
with an architectural machine that liberated life.
It also reorganised the hierarchy of lived space to
be more democratic. The traditional structure of
a planned city is a fan shape organised around
a centre of power, for example, the palace. The
Bauhaus later develops machine-like motif: the
grid, which has no centre.

As well as shape, colour and texture of surface,

the effects of light were thought to be as much
a part of the architecture of Bauhaus buildings
as concrete and steel. For this reason, Meyers
architectural designs include maps of the
changing position of the sun over the seasons
and the buildings exposure to its light.

Everything about Bauhaus life was designed

to set people free, from womens dresses to
the way a door opens. In 1926, Breuer created
a film strip that showed what the Bauhaus
aimed for. The work presents a history of
sitting, with each chair depicted becoming
lighter and more streamlined as the centuries
pass. The final strip shows a person seated
on nothing but air. It illustrates how we might
feel once our tools have become so perfect in
their function that we no longer notice them.

But such a strong formal idea did not mean that

the spaces were cold and inhuman. We tend to
think of Bauhaus architecture as uniformly white,
setting the tone for modernist architecture later in
the twentieth century. But Bauhaus architectural
designs made dynamic and playful use of colour
to create spatial effects and a sense of movement.
Here is a description from the plan for the Dessau
building:

choose a window through which sunlight is

throwing a bright reflection on the floor.

Directional arrows and lines indicate routes to

the workshops and departments, each bearing
a characteristic colour. The design differentiates
between load-bearing and non-bearing surfaces,
thereby endowing the architectonic tension with
lucid expression. The spatial effect of the colours
is heightened by the application of a variety of
materials: slick high-gloss, polished, granular, and
rough plastered surfaces, dull matte and highgloss coats of paint, glass, metal, and so on.*
In reality this plan wasnt followed in full. But the
masters coloured their Dessau homes with their
own distinctive choices. Kandinsky opted for black
and gold interiors.

Inspired by Meyer, make a study of how sunlight

and shadow fall into a room or over a building.
You can do this on different scales:
stand a pencil upright (with its base in tack) in
a window.

find a strong shadow from a building.

Then mark the movement of light by
tracing its shadow on paper or chalking
around it on the ground every hour.
At the end of the day, take a photograph of
your drawing.
How does making this drawing increase
your awareness of the shifting light?
Does changing light have an effect on your
mood? If so, how does it make you feel?
Do you think light should be thought of as a
building material just like stone and wood? Why?
Is the building you are in right now designed
to make the best use of light? Is there
anything in its design that youd change?

This exercise is inspired by Breuers invisible

chair. Select an everyday tool. It could
be a phone, a kettle, or a social network
site. Think about what it lets you do.
What is its function? What power does it give you?
If it was replaced with a super power or animal
power, what would that be? For example,
without your phone would you be able to listen
to someone in another city with just your ears?
Make a drawing of that super power.
Is there a difference between this ideal
super power and what the tool lets you
do in real life? If so, what is it?
For example, does your social network
site let you describe yourself in the
way you would most like to?
Or does it limit your choice and
emphasise some things over others?
If so, why does it do that?
How does that affect the way we think
about ourselves and our friends?
What would be better? Make a list and/or draw
a picture of how your tool could be improved.

* From the Bauhaus buildings chromatic orientation plan, quoted in

Function and Color in the Bauhaus Building in Dessau by Monika
Markgraf in Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin et al
(ed.s), Hatje Cantz, 2009, p.197.

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6. Activity: Picturing the Utopia

an Object was Designed For

7. Activity: Make a Celebration

A theatre design activity resulting in either a real
or an imaginary social event.

A longer noticing and drawing activity.

This task is designed to help you detect the utopian
dreams hidden inside ordinary household objects.

The Bauhauslers celebrated anything that gave

them a cause to throw a party, from colleagues
receiving citizenship to the birth of a child. Parties
marked important events and helped to release
social tension and to build bonds between
teachers and students. Festivals such as kite and
lantern processions also created links with the
local community.

Select one of the older objects in your

home, especially one that looks a bit out of
place amongst your things for example,
a lamp, table, radiator or picture.
Look at the object away from the other things
that are usually around it. Put it against a blank
wall or piece of paper if that helps. Handle it and
make a sketch of it to really get a sense of it.

The parties and celebrations became artworks

and total theatre in themselves. For example,
for the White Party, everyone was given the
loose theme of spots and stripes. For their most
spectacular party, the Metal Party, guests wore
tin foil and metal objects. They entered the room
in tin toboggans and clattered up the stairs on
steps that were rigged to make different metallic
chimes. The walls were covered in metal plates,
like distorting mirrors.

Now think about what kind of person

this object was designed for.
What kind of life would they have?
What would they like to do for fun?
What would they wear?
What would they like to eat?
What would their home look like?
What would their other belongings
and furniture look like?
What colours, shapes and patterns
would the furniture have?
Next, draw that person beside the
object youve already sketched.
Then draw in their home around
the person and the object.
Compare your drawing with your
real home. How different are they?
What do the differences tell you?

Lucia Moholy, Walter Gropiuss directors office, 192425

Reprinted in Neue Arbeiten der Bauhauswerksttten, 1927
Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin
DACS 2012

Taking inspiration from this, plan your own

celebration. Decide what your theme will be.
What kind of costumes will you suggest your
guests wear? Leave it open enough to give them
room to be really playful. Make sure its easy to
do with cheap materials and scrap.
What themed music will you play? Plan how will
you decorate the space.
Design your flyer and poster to advertise the
event.
If you hold the party in real life, notice how your
guests interpret your instructions.
Do they dress up and act the way you expected?
For example, does your shy friend act more
confidently when in costume? Does someone
you think of as a safe dresser wear the most
outlandish outfit in the room?

Would you run a party like this again? If so, what

would you do differently?
8. Activity: Make a Gift
A craft activity that can done alone or in a group.
The Bauhauslers gave each other a lot of gifts.
Often they were artworks or furniture that theyd
made in the workshops. One teacher made
individual certificates for her students by hand.
On Gropiuss 44th birthday, all the Bauhauslers
added their lip-prints to a card. The newest
students kisses are all out of kilter with the
neat grids of their trained seniors. On Klees
50th birthday, some Bauhauslers even hired an
aeroplane to drop a large parcel of presents into
his garden.
You might not be able to hire a plane, but what
present can you make to surprise someone with?
It doesnt have to be their birthday. It could be
another special event. For example, has someone
you care about achieved a challenge they were
worried about? Celebrate what theyve done
by making them a card or a present. This could
be an individual gift or one you involve other
people with, so you express your gratitude or
congratulations as a group.
How does it feel to give a gift or card that youve
made yourself?
What was the reaction of the person who
received it?
Do you think they valued it more or less because
it was hand made?
What should we value more, the time someone
has put into making something by hand or the
money they spent on it? Why?
Do we value money too much some times?
Give examples to explain your answer.

What does that say about their personalities?

Does it reinforce or undermine how you thought
about each person before they came?
How does it feel to let other people play with your
ideas and take them on as their own?
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unlearning
At the traditional fine art academies students
would have spent their training copying paintings
and sculptures by the Old Masters. The closest
students got to that at the Bauhaus was to
experiment with tracing over reproductions of Old
Master paintings, analysing them geometrically
and mathematically to explore their fundamental
forms. In other words, rather than bow down
to the old authorities, the Bauhaus took their
masterpieces apart and reassembled them into
something completely fresh. This impulse to get
back to something more basic behind traditional
forms was driven by a scepticism towards the old
regimes of knowledge and power. This scepticism
largely came from a distrust of the culture of the
past that had allowed or even led to mass conflict
on an unthinkable scale. In response, the school
wanted to give its students the chance to start
again, to get back to a lost innocence, through the
method of unlearning.

Every Bauhaus student started with the

preliminary course: a period of creative
experiment. Through repeated exercises they
were trained to unlearn rigid habits gained, for
example, from specialising as a painter. Such
habits could block perception by emphasising
what you see over other sensations, and by
building up routine ways of looking. The
preliminary course aimed to train students to
unlearn their received knowledge and bad
habits, and relearn through their own experience.
Unlearning focused on the body and on sensory
experiment, reconnecting body and mind. Albers
called this seeing by doing.
The preliminary course was influenced by Asian
philosophies that, unlike the Western tradition,
do not perceive a split between body and mind.
Itten began his classes by focusing on the whole
body. He would lead the students in stretching and
breathing exercises like those done in Yoga. After
this they would do a quick-fire expressive drawing
exercise to wake up the mind and senses. For
example, they would be asked to draw a dramatic
scene, such as a storm. The idea was not to draw
what they saw directly, but make what they saw
flow through the whole body, and let that feeling
drive what they made or drew.
Itten would train his students sensory perception
by having them touch a range of textures with
their eyes closed. In a short time, he wrote,
their sense of touch improved to an astonishing
degree. Moholy-Nagy, who later taught the
preliminary course, developed touch panels
charts of textures that his students used to test
their responses to different sensations. He argued
that touch is our primary sense, but the most
neglected by the language of art, and particularly
under threat in modern times, no doubt
because experience of the world was becoming
increasingly filtered through text and image.
That the methods of unlearning were seen as
a challenge or even a threat to mainstream
society and education is clear: middle-class
German parents would tell their children, If you
dont behave, Ill send you to the Bauhaus.

Johannes Itten, Colour sphere in seven light stages and twelve tones,
from Bruno Adler, ed., Utopia. Dokumente der Wirklichkeit (Utopia:
Documents of Reality), 1921
Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin
DACS 2012

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experiment and play

9. Activity: Make a Sculpture of Contrasts

Bauhaus students were as likely to work with scrap as with

traditional art materials. For example, they would experiment with
wire mesh, cardboard, plastic, tinfoil, matchboxes, glass and sheet
metal. Albers describes how his students tested the properties of
paper by sewing, buttoning, riveting, typing pinning and many
other ways of fastening it. He explained that through these activities:
we do not always create works of art, but rather experiments; it is
not our ambition to fill museums: we are gathering experience.

A longer sculpture and drawing exercise.

Why was it so important that students should play with materials

without needing to complete an artwork or product? One answer
is that it was a way of unlearning the need to measure all human
activity against its usefulness for war, for industry, or for the market.
In the philosophical tradition of Friedrich Schiller and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Bauhaus education placed its focus on the innate talents
and fascinations of the student, rather than assessing them against
a standard measure of knowledge imposed from outside. It also
emphatically encouraged collaboration rather than competition.
Free experiment fuelled the possibilities for free creativity, wrote
Albers. He believed that learning how to invent through the process
of discovery was the basis of training for every kind of design.
This learning, he said, was best done through undisturbed,
uninfluenced experimentation. It meant beginning by working
with the material in a purposeless, playful way with the hands.
These lessons in free experimentation carried over into the different
specialist workshops. For example, Stlzl led her students away
from the tradition of making a woven picture by encouraging
them to experiment with weaving as a technology. To do this they
used a handloom, even though their designs would be produced
by machine. This hand-led experimentation resulted in radical
compositions that would not have come from simply drawing
a design onto paper.
Breuer, too, applied the lessons of Bauhaus experiment to his
product designs by exploring the potential of existing materials and
technology, and collaborating with others from different specialisms.
For example, the inspiration for his tubular-steel chairs came from
a bicycle frame. He then called on the help of the local aeroplane
factory to help him develop his designs.

23

Itten thought that all forms can be reduced to a

series of oppositions. For example, colour, marks,
texture can be described as large or small, thick
or thin, surface or line, horizontal or vertical, a lot
or a little, straight or curved, long or short, broad
or narrow, smooth or rough, sharp or blunt,
hard or soft, see-through or opaque, continuous
or broken up, and so on. Itten would guide his
students to make sculptures from things that they
found lying around that played on these contrasts.
He believed that this was the way to discover
the basic laws of creativity that would help his
students throughout their lives.
Try making a sculpture from scraps that plays
upon a contrast of qualities. (Note that the
Bauhaus workshops always used everything up
and never left waste.)
If you do this as a group, first create your own
sculpture away from the group. Then come
together to discuss and choose whose sculpture
has the best range of contrasts within it.
Then sit down together to draw that sculpture
to explore its contrasts further.
What did you experience during this process?
What did you learn?
Has making this study enhanced your awareness
of the difference in materials around you in every
day life? If so, how?
Do you think its possible to discover the basic
laws of creativity from repeatedly doing this
experiment? Do you think such laws exist?

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going back to basics

a. citizens of the universe

Bauhaus attempted to pare back form and

function to its basic elements. It wanted to scrape
away false ideals and inessential elements from
art and design that had accrued over history.

After the horrors of war, many at the Bauhaus

actively resisted expressions of national identity
and hoped to create a world in which borders
between people no longer mattered. They also
wanted to make design universally legible by
removing cultural associations and national
symbols from the design of objects. In this way,
design became a form of social action and a
philosophy of identity.

As you explore the exhibition, youll see the

different ways in which Bauhauslers attempted to
do this. There is a striking contrast, for example,
between subjective, expressive works that are
intended to affect us like a kind of lightening
conductor for primordial experience, and those
that try to use scientific objectivity to refine and
give life to the true principles of form.
This section explores three Bauhaus strategies for
liberating form and function by going back to
basics, and suggests activities to put their ideas
to work.

If you look at some of the examples of Bauhaus

advertising in the exhibition, youll see figures
wearing masks or with their identifying features
blanked out through negative exposure. This is
one way in which the Bauhaus experimented
with removing racial or national identity from its
design. Another is Bayers attempt to strip back
lettering to its essential geometric forms, removing
all trace of handwriting or cultural symbol. He
wanted to clean away anything that wasnt
essential to the alphabets most basic function:
to translate sound into graphic marks. He even
refused to give his Universal typeface capital
letters, arguing that there is no capital letter in
the spoken word. He hoped his simplification of
lettering would make be easier for machines to
print, and for everyone to read and use.
By doing this he was taking an active stance
against the most commonly used German
typeface, Fraktur, which had become associated
with a nostalgic German national identity, and
increasingly with National Socialist ideas.

Bauhaus
10. Activity:
What Voice do Letters Speak In?
A craft and typography exercise that requires the
use of a computer and printer, or copying by hand
from a type book.
How successful was Bayer in creating a visual
voice for the Bauhaus? To find out, compare
examples of his Universal typeface in the
exhibition with how the word Bauhaus looks
when written in the typeface Fraktur, above.
Imagine if the Bauhaus had used Fraktur.
Would that have affected how it saw itself?
What kind of school would it have been if its
graphic identity had been Fraktur?
Type the word(s) for your favourite food. Change
it to a typeface that fits it well. Then copy it and
change it to a second typeface that fits it badly.
Look at them together. What feelings and ideas
come to mind when you look at the first, then
the second? How does type design affect the
meaning of the word? When you next read a
menu, think about whether the typeface matches
the kind of food it offers.
The neuroscientist Leonard Mlodinow argues that
the typeface a menu is set in, not just the way it is
described, actually affects how we taste the food.
In your experience, do you think he is right?

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26

Josef Albers, Bauhaus lettering set, 1926-31

The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and DACS, London 2012

Erich Consemller, Lis Beyer or Ise Gropius in B3 club chair by Marcel Breuer wearing a mask by Oskar Schlemmer and a dress fabric designed by
Lis Beyer, c. 1927 Herzogenrath, Berlin. On long-term loan to Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Bestand Museen Estate of Erich Consemller

11. Activity: The Bare Necessities of Type

12. Activity: Making Masks

A typography exercise that does not require

a computer.
Albers also developed an alphabet that simplified
its form dramatically. Look at his cut-out lettering
in the exhibition. Each letter is created simply by
combining two or more of the ten forms that make
up the top line.
As a warm up exercise to start thinking about
how much or how little we need to see of ordinary
words to be able to read them, try this quick
experiment:

27

Cover the bottom half of a word, what effect

does that have? What happens when you cover
the top half?
Now, taking inspiration from Albers alphabet,
experiment with how few shapes you need to
make up the letters of your name. Try to keep
your shapes and combinations as simple as
possible, while making sure other people can
still read the letters.
How much detail can you loose before the letters
become meaningless?

An activity is based on analysis of the works in

the exhibition followed by a making exercise and
a simple social experiment.

What do you feel when you wear it? How do

others react to you? How does it feel to watch
others and be watched? Do you feel more or less
free? Why?

Look for examples of masks in the exhibition.

Why do you think they are being used? What do
they say about the person wearing them? What
character do they have?
Make a simple mask from a circle of paper with
holes for your eyes. Draw on it if you like. Fix string
or elastic through holes in the sides and tie it
loosely round your head.

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b. speaking without words

13. Activity: Take the Colour-Shape Test

The painter Kandinsky believed that art should

conjure up in us an experience beyond the
reach of words, rather than giving a picture
of something that can be named or described.
Through this he hoped to find a basic form of
communication that speaks to us at a more
primary level than words. For him, this kind of
abstract art was an attempt to resist words and
pictures and replace them with effects that worked
directly on the body and the mind.

A simple drawing activity that is ideal for doing

in the exhibition, using a photocopy of the
triangle, square and circle below for each person.
To discover the basic building blocks of what he
thought of as a pre-verbal language, Kandinsky
tried to establish a universal human association
between basic shapes and colours.
He had varying success. On one occasion
he attempted to prove it with a collective
psychological test. He gave all members of the
Bauhaus the following questionnaire to fill in. It
contained a triangle, circle and square. The task
was to colour each in with the primary colour that
each shape seemed to suggest.
Try Kandinskys test yourself.
Fill each shape opposite with the colour you most
associate with it.

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30

Now look at the works by Kandinsky in the

exhibition.

14. Activity: Hearing Pictures and

Seeing Sound

Most respondents agreed with Kandinskys colour

choices. Do your colours match his?

A choice of composition and drawing exercises.

Do you think we do all associate the same colours

to shapes? Or is it possible that everyone who
filled in Kandinskys questionnaire was already
influenced by his own well-known colour-shape
combinations?
Kandinsky tried to detach colours and shapes
from representing anything that could be named.
But still he described blue as heavenly and yellow
as earthy. Do you think its possible for an image
ever to be completely free of seeming to look like
something else? When you look at Kandinskys
pictures in the exhibition, do the abstract shapes
remind you of anything? What associations do
they have for you?
Look at the other colour experiments in the
exhibition for example, those by Gertrud
Arndt. Do the colour and shape combinations
create effects that arent real, such as depth or
movement where it doesnt really exist?

Kandinsky believed that the experience of sound,

colour and shape were connected by sensation.
He could hear colour and made polyphonic
paintings that is, pictures that made him feel
as if he was hearing them as music.
Make a piece of music for a picture in the
exhibition tap out its rhythm and make a tune
that follows the shapes, colours and moods of
the painting.
Or, listen to a piece of music and see if you can
draw it. What shape is it? Does it have patterns
and colours? How do your marks on the page
show its rhythm?
How do these experiments change your
experience of the artwork they are based on?
Do you look at the other artworks differently now?
If so, how?

Try experimenting with putting different colour

combinations together yourself. What effects can
you find?

Wassily Kandinsky, Circles in a Circle, 1923

Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950
ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2012

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15. Activity: Take a Line for a Walk

16. Activity: A World in a Painting

18. Activity: Words Without Meaning

A simple drawing exercise.

A storytelling activity you can do in the gallery.

Klee approached abstraction differently from his

fellow painter Kandinsky. Where Kandinsky would
often explore his subject with several studies
before he made a finished work, Klee would
never make a study. Instead, famously he would
often begin a composition simply by starting a
line on the page and following where it went. He
described this process as taking a line for a walk
(Pedagogical Notebook, 1925). This walk was
just for itself, setting out with no particular aim in
mind.

Examine a painting by Klee. Look at what he does

with the paint. Is it scratched and scraped? Is the
perspective realistic? Are the forms familiar? Does
it represent something outside of itself thats real?
Or is this a world of its own?

A quick and easy spoken word exercise you can

do anywhere.

Make a mark on the page and let it flow. Where

are you going to take it for a walk? If you see a
shape start to form, will you finish it? Or will you
move on and follow the line just for itself?
When youve finished your drawing take time to
reflect on it.
How did it feel to work this way? Give three words
that describe your experience.
Did you draw differently from usual? Did it feel
liberating or restricting to work this way?
If so, how?

Describe what happens in this picture. Who lives

in it? What happens there?
17. Activity: The Writing on the Wall
A craft and design exercise that can be done
using a computer and printer, newspaper and a
photocopier, or simply paper and pen.
Look at the works in the exhibition by Hajo Rose.
He typed letters in repeated formations to create
designs for cloth and wallpaper. By clustering
them into patterns that play with their shapes
rather than what they represent, the letters and
numbers lose their meaning.
Play with type in this way and see what patterns
you can make.
What happens when you look at letters only
for their shapes and how they work together as
patterns, rather than what they mean as words?
Are they still letters, or do they just become
shapes? Do they still have their old meaning,
do they get new meaning or do they have no
meaning? Why?
What light does this exercise throw on this
challenging philosophical question:
What is the connection between language
and reality?

In a volume of his poetry, Kandinsky invites us to

repeat words until they lose their meaning and
are experienced as abstract sound. Try it out with
a word you use every day.
Does the experiment work?
How do you feel when you hear the word now?
19. Activity: Colour Light Play
A craft and theatre activity with an optional
music element.
Notice how many works in the exhibition play with
light. What is their effect as you walk through the
gallery?
One of the most significant experiments with
light is Reflecting Colour Light Play for which
Kurt Schwerdtfeger choreographed projected
coloured light to make spatial forms and moving
patterns. These created abstract effects that were
designed to be enjoyed as a theatre show.
Experiment with everyday materials to create
light effects. Pierce a piece of card with holes in a
pattern. Make a larger opening in the card and
cover it with a clear plastic sweet wrapper. Cover
another opening with clingfilm. In a darkened
room, shine a torch behind the card onto a wall.
What effects can you create?
Can light be a theatre show in itself? Do you need
to make a story to go with it to enjoy it, or does it
have its own kind of fascination? How would you
describe this?
What happens if you play different kinds of music
during the same part of the show? For example,
a sad folk song followed by a fast upbeat
electronic track. How does the change in music
change your experience?

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20. Activity: Remaking the Game

A game design exercise that can be done as
a craft or computer-based activity.
Can you apply Hartwigs techniques to another
board game you play?
Start by thinking about what changes to the
game would make it easier to understand. Make
sketches of your ideas by trying out different
designs on paper. For example, design new
symbols for the games pieces that make it clearer
what they do (without making it too easy to play).
Try taking out anything from your design that you
dont need to play the game. See how simple you
can make it. You may need to keep redrawing it to
see how far you can pare it back.
When youre happy with your new design, redraw
the board. Next make new models of the playing
pieces from whatever materials you have to hand
(Blutack, modelling clay, cardboard shapes with
drawings, and so on).
Josef Hartwig, Chess set (model XVI) with cardboard box designed by Joost Schmidt, 192324. 32 pieces: pear wood, cardboard and paper
Centre Pompidou, Paris. Muse National dArt Moderne /Centre de Cration Industrielle. Gift Clarence Westbury Foundation DACS 2012

c. form = function
In the nineteenth century the furniture designer
and social visionary William Morris argued
that we have become the tools of our tools.
He believed that the industrial machine was
making people into slaves, either as workers or
consumers. Inspired by him, the Bauhaus wanted
to liberate people by refining the function of tools
until they could no longer notice them.
Hartwigs chess set is a clear example of form
stripped back to match its function as closely
as possible. The design ignores the traditional
ornamentation and figurative elements that
you would normally see on a chess set. Instead,
the chess pieces have simple shapes and are
designed to show how they move across the
board. Looking at the set in the exhibition, see if
you can work out what kind of movement each
piece makes by how it looks.

35

The sphere on the queen shows that this piece is

highly mobile. The bishop, in contrast, is carved
with a cross. The primary meaning of the cross
is that it makes diagonal movements. Its older
religious meaning is no longer central.
You dont need to know the rules of chess to grasp
quickly what movement each piece can make.
This means that its no longer a game limited to
those whove been taught its rules. In theory this is
a game that everyone can play.

Test it out by getting your friends to play it with

you. Ask them whether the changes are working
for them and gather their suggestions.
Later, tweak your design to make it even better.
How does it feel to play the game with your new
design?
Does your design change the games meaning
in any way? How?

Hartwig experimented with a number of different

designs. The later versions even remove the little
plinth beneath each piece. Gone, too, is the
traditional velvet-lined wooden box with a place
for each piece in order of aristocratic importance.
In Hartwigs cheap cardboard box the pieces slot
snuggly together without hierarchy: the pawns are
no longer at the bottom.
The associations with war and power are erased
from this game of chess and replaced with a
fresh set of possibilities. If the old games of chess
trained us for battle strategy, this new design
imagines a future of equality, and of play, not war.
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curriculum links

Art and Design all activities

places to visit

contemporary references

This resource focuses on Bauhaus pedagogy

and creative learning, rather than its practical
workshop techniques such as textiles, engineering
and metal work. The creative and reflective
activities we have suggested here are intended to
sit across subject areas so you can tailor them to
your teaching agenda.

Citizenship activities: Make Your Manifesto,

Reorganising Reality, Make a Celebration, Make
a Gift, Making Masks, Remaking the Game

buildings

Changing Educational Paradigms

by Ken Robinson, 2010
Robinsons witty animated talk about the need
for radical changes in education today

In his seminal 2009 book Visible Learning, John

Hattie explains how teaching has most impact
when both the learning intentions and success
criteria of a challenging task are made very
clear by the teacher, followed by lots of peer
discussion and practical involvement, resulting in
achievements that are new to the students. This
is close to a description of Bauhaus pedagogy
at its best. We can draw on its ideas to expand
our own learning and teaching styles. In todays
terms Bauhaus may be referred to as experiential
learning, with an emphasis on co-learning.
Although as an education professional you can
draw your own conclusions about the success of
those methods when you see the exhibition.
This is an exhibition of great richness and depth.
The ideas and activities offered here can only ever
present a small sample of its potential. You may
find you are inspired to create your own activities
and exercises in response to the exhibition.

Design and technology all activities

Drama activities: Make Your Manifesto, Make
a Celebration, Making Masks, Words Without
Meaning, Colour Light Play
English and Modern Languages activities:
Make Your Manifesto, The Invisibile Tool, What
Voice Do Letters Speak In?, The Bare Necessities
of Type, The Writing on the Wall, Words Without
Meaning
Geography activities: Make Your Manifesto,
Reorganising Reality, Shadow Maps
History activities: Make Your Manifesto,
Reorganising Reality, Picturing the Utopia an
Object was Designed For, What Voice Do Letters
Speak In?
ICT activities: Expanding New Technology, The
Invisible Tool, Picturing the Utopia an Object was
Designed For, Remaking the Game
Music activities: Make Your Manifesto, Words
Without Meaning, Colour Light Play

The Bauhaus Building, Dessau, Germany

For visitor information visit the website
Lawn Road Flats, Hampstead, London
Where Gropius, Breuer and Moholy stayed. Wells
Coates designed the flats and Breuer designed
some of the furniture. It was one of the few
modernist buildings in London at the time.
Impington Village College, Cambridgeshire
Gropius designed it with Maxwell Fry. They
were commissioned by the local chief education
officer. This rural college was designed to be
an education and arts centre for the whole
community, from children to the elderly. It
became a model for modernist school-buildings
constructed after the war in the UK.
The Red House (National Trust), Bexley
This is the only house that William Morris
designed himself. It is considered one of
the most important influences for modernist
architecture: Morris intended that nothing would
be included that didnt have a purpose or provide
ornamentation without reason. It was purposebuilt to include spaces for communal living, play,
work and reflection.
historical references
Bauhaus-online
The worlds biggest Bauhaus online resource
Bauhaus: Art as Life
The catalogue of the exhibition
Weimar Republic Source Book
A book of original documents from 1915 1933
in English

Rethinking Learning: the 21st Century Learner

by the MacArthur Foundation, 2010
A short video on the value of learning from the
US creative foundation
Visible Learning A synthesis of over 800
meta-analyses relating to achievement
by John Hattie, 2009
Hatties big book of evidence about what is
(and isnt) effective in teaching
Imagination, How Creativity Works
by Jonah Lehrer, 2012
A vital new book on how our brains work and
how to make creativity work for you
Mindsets: on how the two mindsets influence
behaviour and achievement
by Carol Dweck, 2011
Psychologist Dwecks mindset concept is
paradigm shifting
Cognitive Surplus, Creativity and Generosity in
a Connected Age
by Clay Shirky, 2010
Shirky shows that we are changing how we use
our time and technology today
Play is more than fun
by Stuart Brown, 2008
A talk on Browns significant insights about play
being essential to our lives
Cultural Learning Alliance
UKs current campaign for cultural learning
The UKs leading campaign with resources and
links to cultural institutions
How Technology Evolves
by Kevin Kelly, 2006
Kellys ideas on technology have been
influential for decades
You know more than you think you do: design as
resourcefulness and self-reliance
by Emily Campbell, 2009
A clear statement of why learning about design
remains important for citizens today

37

38

booking
booking a group visit
Contact the Groups Booking Line
Tel: 020 7382 7211
(line open 10am5pm, MonFri)
Fax: 020 7382 7270
Email: groups@barbican.org.uk
Groups are welcome, although we would
encourage you to avoid weekends and the busy
period of 12.30 2pm. A maximum group size of
about 20 is suggested.
exhibition admission prices
Standard: 10 online/12 on the door
Concessions: 7 online/8 on the door
Secondary school (groups of ten or more) 6 each
Age 1317 6 online/7 on the door
Ages 12 and under free
online
barbican.org.uk/artgallery
phone
0845 120 7511 (9am 8pm daily)
in person
Art Gallery Ticket Desk
Open daily 11am 8pm (except Wed 11am6pm
and Thu 11am10pm)
planning your visit
how to find us
Nearest tube stations: Barbican, Moorgate,
St Pauls, Liverpool Street.
Nearest train stations: Liverpool St, Farringdon,
City Thameslink, Barbican, Moorgate.
Coach: there is a setting down and picking up
point in Silk St. Parking is limited to the metered
bays in Silk St and Fore St. For further information
contact 020 7606 3030, asking for Parking
Services.

cafes / packed lunches

If you have brought packed lunches you can eat
in the Stalls Floor Foyer (Level 1), the Main Foyer
(Level G) or outside on the Lakeside where there
are plenty of picnic benches and tables. Barbican
Foodhall, just off the Foyer on Level G, offers full
meals as well as sandwiches, drinks and also
childrens meals. It is not suitable for large groups.
further information
Medical assistance and full evacuation staff are
available at all times. The Creative Learning
department has a full CRB child protection policy.
If you would like to see the full policy and risk
assessment information, please contact Creative
Learning on 020 7382 2333.
contact
We would welcome feedback on this learning
resource and the exhibition. Please send your
feedback to Creative Learning administrator.
T: 020 7382 2333 F: 020 7382 7037
E: creative.learning@barbican.org.uk
credits
Written by Emma Ridgway and Cathy Haynes
Copy Edited by Melissa Larner
barbican guildhall / creative learning
Barbican Centre
Silk St
London EC2Y 8DS
T: 020 7382 2333
F: 020 7382 7037
E: creative.learning@barbican.org.uk

disabled visitors
For full Access information please visit
barbican.org.uk
You can also call or email the Barbican Access
Manager on access@barbican.org.uk,
020 7382 7348.
cloakrooms
There is a free cloakroom on Level 3 by the Art
Gallery.

39

The City of London

Corporation is the
founder and principal
funder of the
Barbican Centre