Encounter design diversity
Tour 4
With its reform programme and pioneering project “The New Frankfurt”, Hessen was a hotspot of the New Building movement in the 1920s. New interior design standards were set with the Frankfurt kitchen.
Less well known is the fact that the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt am Main houses some of the estate of the Bauhausers Hannes Meyer and Mart Stam, or that the Bauhausers Gertrud and Alfred Arndt spent most of their lives in Darmstadt, where their heirs still manage part of their archives today.
The first site of the Bauhaus Archive, which later moved to Berlin, was Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt. From early on it was seen as an artists’ colony seeking to unite fine art and craft – the same goal that the Bauhaus set itself when it was founded in 1919.
With their “New Typography” or “Elementary Typography”, Bauhausers such as Herbert Bayer, László Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers and Joost Schmidt revolutionised graphic and communication design across the globe. On the occasion of its anniversary in 2019, the renowned Gutenberg Museum in Mainz is celebrating their work with a special, comprehensive typography exhibition. Furthermore, the achievements of the New Building movement will be presented in Rhineland-Palatinate to mark the anniversary of the Bauhaus movement. Examples of this is the communal housing development in Ludwigshafen, as well as the listed Ebert housing estate.
