Image made for the front cover, based on a photo of ‘Infield’, an installation by Linda Tegg at ArkDes, comprising a biodiverse meadowland planted in the asphalt car park by the entrance to the museum and accumulating life throughout 2020, and framed by geometrical shapes drawn from a Herbert Bayer postcard for the original Bauhaus in 1923. Typeface is Untitled Sans by Klim.

Thoughts on a New European Bauhaus

An offering to frame the design process for this new European Union proposition; plotting a course through a minefield, planting seeds for a meadow

Ever since the President of the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen, dropped the idea of a New European Bauhaus into her State of the Union speech on 16th September 2020, I’ve been discussing it with members of the European Commission team working on the proposal. Given how open the proposition was, I immediately started jotting down a few thoughts about the possibility, whilst a conversation opened up with my colleagues Christian Bason (CEO of the Danish Design Centre), Rowan Conway (Head of Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose’s Mission-Oriented Innovation Network and an experienced design professional with whom I lead the Transformation by Design module on IIPP Masters of Public Administration degree) and Mariana Mazzucato (Director of UCL IIPP, and who increasingly requires no introduction.)

From those conversations, I sketched out a document that could be picked up and read by European Commission policymakers and practitioners, few of whom have deep experience of arts and design, yet which would also make sense to experienced artists, designers, educators, curators … It was not easy to write something…