The fact that this could be a slightly bigger challenge than one might initially think was highlighted by Swiss architect and design theorist Lukas Imhof. As he reminded the audience, there was a significant hiatus between the Bauhaus visionary rhetoric, developed by its founder Walter Gropius, and the empirical reality of the design practice it engendered.
What the Bauhaus obviously accomplished was a modernist synthesis of the arts and design that gave it the iconic position it still holds today. Yet its relation to technology and industrial production remained a fairly troubled one. The Bauhaus elitist ethos [e.
What interests me in this context is less the question of what the Bauhaus may or may not have achieved in terms of modernist design but rather the difference between the rhetoric and real conditions of social change. Gropius and his colleagues were driven by the idea to create a new kind of human being through the design of a revolutionary social infrastructure.
Der neue Mensch the Bauhaus founders envisioned was to be shaped by the rational, functionalist and essentially democratic architecture and commodities that surrounded them. The emancipated, sovereign individual was supposed to emerge out of this infrastructure, leading the world towards a more collaborative, participative and generally better future. In the original Bauhaus manifesto of , Gropius had formulated his vision in with a great deal of pathos:.
Nearly a century later, emphatic visions of a neue Mensch are reemerging in the world of design and its related fields. However, this time around, their basic attitude has radically shifted: from politically driven aesthetics to innovation. In spite of the nominal importance of creativity, art and culture in our post-industrial societies, these visions are characterized by a near total absence of significant artistic impulse.
