The CO-OP principle – Hannes Meyer and the Concept of Collective Design

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Exhibitions

 September 20 – October 15, 2016

LECTURE SERIES

September 20, 2016
Inaugural lecture
Marilyne Andersen, Dean ENAC School
Pascal Broulis, Conseiller d’Ă©tat du Canton de Vaud
Claudia Perren, Director Bauhaus Dessau
Eligio Novello, Fondation Culture du BĂąti
Salvatore Aprea, Acm-EPFL

September 24, 2016
NUIT DES MUSEES
Visites guidées pour tout public
et pour les enfants

September 26, 2016
Raquel Franklin
co-curatrice de l’exposition, Mexico
Amica Dall
architecte, Assemble, Londres

October 10, 2016
Christof Mayer
architecte, raumlabor Berlin, Berlin

October 14, 2016
Round Table
« Lausanne, le Canton de Vaud et la culture du bùti : Une tradition
mĂȘlant humanisme et modernisme, une inspiration
pour l’avenir »
modération Matthieu Jaccard

An exhibition in two sites presented by the Fondation Culture du Bùti, produced by the Foundation Bauhaus Dessau, in cooperation in Lausanne with the Archives de la construction moderne and the Tracés magazine.

The co-op principle – Hannes Meyer and the Concept of Collective Design

As the second director of this renowned school of design, Hannes Meyer is still overshadowed by the world-famous Bauhaus directors Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Historically, this is chiefly due to his involvement in explicitly left wing politics. For him, art, design and architecture were not independent disciplines. In interaction with the sciences, he saw them as components integral to a comprehensive restructuring of society under the maxim “Volksbedarf statt Luxusbedarf” (The needs of the people instead of the need for luxury). He no longer awarded them an elitist special status, but saw them as a serving part of society.

The exhibition reveals how Hannes Meyer’s design practice changed in just a few years as he transitioned from socialist co-operative member to committed Marxist, by way of contact with the avantgarde of the 1920s. How, under the auspices of the collective, his design vocabulary transformed from a Palladio-inspired classicism to the constructivism of the avant-garde, through to a completely new, tempered understanding of the rationality of modernism, of regionality and the relationship to landscape. Although Meyer’s time at the Bauhaus was brief, in this context with the ‘Volkswohnung’ (People’s flat) that he propagandized, it was pivotal to his entire creative output.

Under these premises, the exhibition layout reflects Hannes Meyer’s design practice in four themes – Society, Education, Architecture and Landscape – and refers to his spheres of activity in four satellites – Influences, ABC – Hannes Meyer and the Avantgarde, Politics and Migration, and Reception and Marginalisation.

Through documents from the EPFL Archives of modern construction, the exhibition brings Hannes Meyer’s contribution to two important chapters of modernism in french-speaking Switzerland to light; the competition for the League of Nations building in Geneva in 1927, for which he received international attention, and the first International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) at La Sarraz in 1928, where he was an active participant.

Une exposition de la Fondation Bauhaus Dessau rĂ©alisĂ©e sous l’égide de l’ambassadrice de Suisse en Allemagne, Christine Schraner Burgener

Présentée à Lausanne par la Fondation Culture du Bùti

En coopĂ©ration avec l’universitĂ© AnĂĄhuac MĂ©xico Norte, avec le soutien du programme Fellowship Internationales Museum der Kulturstiftung des Bundes 2015

Avec la collaboration des archives du Deutschen Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt am Main, de l’institut gta de l’ETHZ, du Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, de la Fondation Bauhaus Dessau, du Siedlungsgenossenschaft Freidorf à Muttenz bei Basel, du Kunstmuseum Olten et du Schusev State Museum of Architecture, Moscow.

Curateurs
Raquel Franklin, Werner Möller

Gestion de projet au Bauhaus Dessau
Tim Leik, Christin Irrgang

Scénographie et direction artistique
Werner Möller

Realisation à lausanne, en coopération avec Bauhaus Dessau

F’ar
Gaël Cochand, Laurent Bertchi, Katell Bosser, Nicolas de Courten

Acm
Salvatore Aprea

Revue Tracés
Christophe Catsaros, CĂ©dric van der Poel

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