Bauhaus

From the buildings in which we live to the text screens on our cellphones, the look of today's world is deeply influenced by the Bauhaus, the unique, short-lived educational experiment, which flourished in Germany from 1919 until its closure by the Nazis in 1933. Its founding manifesto by Walter Gropius set out a radical educational programme that evolved during the school's turbulent history but ultimately affected art and design education in every part of the world. Charismatic Bauhaus artists, designers and architects including Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer, each of whom made significant contributions to modernist aesthetics.

This course will mark the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus by tracing its background and history. You will discuss its complex educational theory, meet its fascinating cast of characters and study the canon of classic objects designed and made at the school. Lectures will explain the diaspora that followed its closure and describe how the school's ideas spread in response to the political, social and economic forces of the time.