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The young Catalan architects behind the Bauhaus Museum Dessau, and other studios, participate in Mugak/ events to mark its 100-year anniversary

  • When the Catalan studio won the international competition to design the Bauhaus Museum Dessau, the young architects who worked there had just completed their university degree. They will lecture at Bauhaus 1919-2019.

 

  • Some of the subjects that will be at the heart of the debates include: the recognition of the women architects who formed part of the school; an analysis of the link between architecture, art and design; and the renewal of the educational programmes. 

 

The second edition of the International Architecture Biennial (Mugak/) marks the 100-year anniversary of the Bauhaus school by hosting a series of events called Bauhaus 1919-2019 between 5 and 7 November, 2019. These events aim to promote dialogue regarding the role of the female architects who were part of the project but who did not receive the same public recognition as their male counterparts; or about projects such as, the Bauhaus Museum Dessau, recently inaugurated by the Barcelona-based architectural studio. 

The speakers include: José Zabala Roji, the young architect from the Catalan studio Addenda Architects who recently inaugurated the Bauhaus Museum Dessau. The studio’s proposal won the international competition to design the Bauhaus Museum, after winning out 830 entries, when he had just completed his university degree.

The Dessau project took 2.5 years to complete and is composed of a monolithic concrete structure inside a curtain wall. It aims to act as a boundary and bridge between the city and the park. This building is one of the core elements of the cultural programme celebrating the Bauhaus Centenary in Germany, alongside the refurbishments of the Bauhaus museums in Berlin and Weimar.

The school was founded by and under the leadership of Walter Gropius between 1919 and 1933. It was a laboratory of avant-garde design, architecture and applied arts that dialogued with the social context and architects and artists, including Gropius, Breuer, Klee, Kandinsky, Moholy Nagy, Malevich, Mies van der Rohe, Van Doesburg, Oud and Johannes Itten. “His legacy marked the history of art, architecture and design in such a way that today these subjects cannot be understood without first understanding the contribution made by Bauhaus,” states Fernando Golvano, the promoter of the event in collaboration with Atari, an architectural culture association. The events will be hosted at the Architecture Institute of the Basque Country, located in San Sebastian’s Santa Teresa Convent.

The event opens with a seminar on Rationalism, Critical Forms and the Modern Project on 5 November 2019 from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. It will be given by Fernando Golvano, Professor of Aesthetics and the Theory of the Arts.

A conference will be held every day at 7 p.m. from 5 to 7 November at the Architecture Institute of the Basque Country and will a tackle a range of subjects.  The first conference will be led by José Zabala Roji from Addenda Architects on 5 November, followed by Bauhaus and Female Architects by Josenia Hervás y Heras, Professor of Architecture on 6 November; and the event will close with Bauhaus: art, architecture and design by Simón Marchán Fiz, Chaired Professor of Aesthetics and Theory of the Arts on 7 November.

Celebrating the Centenary

Bauhaus Centenary celebrations are completed with two exhibits within the cycle Connections: art and architecture which studies architecture through the lens of various artists.  The first exhibit Bauhaus 100 is the work of the artist José Luis Lanzagorta and is presented by Begiaundi Press at the art gallery Erkain Artelanak in San Sebastián. The collection of serigraphs represents the artist’s interpretation of the tenants of Bauhaus and is open to the public until 16 November 2019.  The second exhibit revisits the legacy Bauhaus left behind at the hands of the artist Christoff Klute at the art gallery Altxerri. The artist uses photographs of the utopia of modernity in architecture such as the White City, a collection of over 4,000 buildings built with a strong Bauhaus component and a unique form of International Style in the 1930s.

Furthermore, the Architecture Institute of the Basque Country hosts  the never-seen-before exhibit System Design: the Ulm School and the Braun Company at the San Telmo Museoa, a tribute to the legacy of the Ulm School, viewed as the heir of Bauhaus tradition.  The exhibit includes exercises pupils did during the basic course at the school under the teachings of Bauhaus teachers, which later served to pave the school’s own path, closer to scientific methodology than to the world of art Bauhaus championed. 

About Mugak/

The Basque Country International Architecture Biennial (Mugak/, the Basque word for boundaries) hosts its second edition with more than 100 activities with the aim of making architecture more accessible to the general public and those who already have a relationship with the discipline. This event is organised by the Department for the Environment, Land Planning and Housing of the Basque Country and seeks to act as a pluralistic, transversal and multicultural meeting point to promote and rekindle dialogue and discussion in order to redefine new boundaries and shape a more ethical, fair and balanced society.



The Programme is being prepared