The Next 100 Years of Bauhaus

Reimagining the Role of Design

Stephen Bau
Builders Collective

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Bauhaus Building, Dessau, Germany. Photo by Stephen Bau.

From the Past to the Future

Changing Our Focus to Existential Problems

It is said that hindsight is 20/20.

We look back at the past as a guide for the present. Except that what we discover is that we have merely repeated the mistakes of the past, or completely misunderstood the idealism and creativity of earlier generations because of how they have been reinterpreted in the present. When we consider the Bauhaus, it seems the resurgence of interest in the most influential design school of the past century is primarily focused on the physical artifacts and the aesthetics of the philosophy of form and function.

Perhaps the story of the Bauhaus could be another episode of the Nice Try! podcast, a study in human aspirations for utopia. As Ezra Klein quipped, “Everything begins as free love and ends up as capitalism. That’s the lesson of utopias.”

Consider 100 years of the influence of the Bauhaus on modern life.

A community of artists and architects conceived the modern system of architecture as a scientific synthesis of the industrial mass-production manufacturing process with the art of manipulating the most appropriate building materials…

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Stephen Bau
Builders Collective

Designer, educator, social architect, founder, Builders Collective. We are exploring how we imagine, design, and build the future together. https://bldrs.co