International Summerschool within the framework of the Kolleg “Cities of tomorrow – CIAM Urbanism”
July – August.2009
To celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Bauhaus, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation invites students from all over the world to participate in an international workshop which, under the motto “Bauhaus city – Get on site!”, will focus on the buildings of classical Modernism in Dessau. The Bauhaus buildings in Dessau traverse the town like a “golden thread”, which begins in the south with the experimental housing estate in Törten and ends in the north with the Kornhaus, a venue for day-trippers on the Elbe. As such, the Bauhaus buildings are remarkable representatives of a radical process of modernisation in the city during the first decades of the 20th century. After a long period of neglect, this modern legacy returned to the centre of public attention, hand in hand with the city’s structural transformation brought on by Germany’s reunification post- 1990: Many Bauhaus buildings were renovated in line with the precepts of monument protection and opened to the public. Dessau aims to attract tourists as the “Bauhaus City in the Garden Realm”; yet the slogan is also relevant to Dessau’s structural transformation into a service city. Nevertheless, the “Bauhaus City” is still controversial: the search for a new self-understanding fluctuates between internal contradictions and external expectations. The Foundation invites young artists, architects, urban planners and designers from all over the world to explore this field of tension in a creative way and to contribute in doing so to a redefinition of the relation between Dessau-Roßlau and the Bauhaus. The summer school will focus on the following places and topics: Törten – “Housing experiment: A little happiness in the big plan”, the Masters’ Houses – “Theme in variations: The modern home”, the Employment Office – “Modern institutions and municipal public relations: A laboratory test”, along with the Kornhaus – “Modern escapes”. These themes will be explored at the respective sites, employing a wide range of approaches as well as different formats and media. The workshops will be accompanied by a series of public lectures. The following institutions have been invited to become partners of the summerschool: AA London, ETH Zürich, School of Architecture Liverpool, NUS Singapur, Dessau Institute of Architecture.
website: http://www.bauhaus-dessau.de/index.php?Bauhaus-city-Get-on-site-5
