For decades the word “Bauhaus” has been synonymous with modernism, a key to a new understanding of functional design for products and spaces, which radically rejected the formal vocabulary of the historicism that marked architecture, the fine arts, and people’s everyday lives. At this turning point the Bauhaus established a new aesthetic of functional austerity and practicality that would have a lasting influence on our concepts of life, work, education, and mode of living.
Alluding to the obligatory grand tour taken by the European aristocracy and bourgeoisie, this new book presents a “Grand Tour of modernism” that wends its way through more than one hundred buildings from the period between 1900 and today, using extensive visual material, essays, practical references, and maps. Not only does the book examine projects by the Bauhaus teachers and their students, but it also finds a place for their ideas and their legacy in history.
This travel book presents the astonishing diversity of new buildings during the interwar years, which ranges from the cultivated, crafted modernism of Paul Bonatz to the dynamic architecture of Erich Mendelsohn, to the organ-like structures of Hans Scharoun. It also documents parallels, conflicts, and controversial positions, in order to identify the zeitgeist of each epoch as it changed.
“Our Grand Tour of Modernism traces a network across the country with many hubs, not just in big cities or places where the Bauhaus were located but also on the periphery and off the beaten track,” write the editors Wolfgang Holler, Annemarie Jaeggi, and Claudia Perren from the Bauhaus Kooperation Berlin Dessau Weimar.
This newly released volume presents 110 places—from famous buildings to insider’s tips throughout Germany—selected by an interdisciplinary jury. Additional essays by Werner Durth and Wolfgang Pehnt discuss the history of the Bauhaus’ influence.
