The Whole World a Bauhaus

How did the Bauhaus manage to become such an innovative force in design and teaching, and in societies?

The ifa exhibition ‘The Whole World a Bauhaus’ is devoted to this theme. Divided into eight different chapters, the exhibition focuses on an aspect of work and life at the Bauhaus between 1919 and 1933. The section on ‘Floating’ explores the Bauhaus interest in motifs of weightlessness and also looks at how glass and skeleton frameworks dematerialized architecture, or how the cantilever chair resting on air became symbolic of an entire design movement. The chapter on ‘Experiment’ presents objects that were the result of new research into materials and space, and whose dimensions, proportions, and testing of materials were also designed to make mass production possible. While the ‘Total Work of Art’ looks at the synthesis of all the arts, and also of art and science and of art and life, the chapter on ‘Community’ presents key objects documenting everyday life at the Bauhaus, including the famous parties. The chapter ‘New Man’ shows that the Bauhaus was not just based on utopian left-wing politics, but also explored other radical new political and philosophical identities. The chapter ‘Art, Crafts, Technology’ presents the Bauhaus workshops and the products they made, while ‘Radical Pedagogy’ looks at the organisation of the Bauhaus and its teaching practice. Crosscultural relations are explored in the chapter entitled ‘Encounters’.

The exhibition title ‘The Whole World a Bauhaus’ goes back to a remark from 1928 of the Bauhaus student and later Bauhaus teacher Fritz Kuhr.