Download - Week 9: Technology and Progress
technology +/= progress
The personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of any extension of ourselves—result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.
Marshall McLuhan, “The Medium is the Message” Understanding Media (1964)
DLF: Digital Migration
DLF: Digital Migration
The Bauhaus Weimar: 1919-1923
Lyonel Feininger, woodcut for Bauhaus manifesto, 1919
Walter Gropius, Fagus Shoe Factory c.1911-1913
Deutscher Werkbund Cologne, 1914
individual vs. universal
Hermann Muthesius Aims of the Werkbund, “thesis” 1914
Henry van de Velde Aims of the Werkbund, “anti-thesis” 1914
The Bauhaus Weimar: 1919-1923
Lyonel Feininger, woodcut for Bauhaus manifesto, 1919
Walter Gropius Programme of the Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, 1919
Johannes Itten the Bauhaus vorkurs
(foundation course)
Walter Gropius’ office
woodworking workshop
Sommerfeld House,1921-22 collective Bauhaus project—a new unity of art and life
art and technology “a new unity” 1923
László Moholy-Nagy
Before the machine, everyone is equal. . . There is no tradition in technology, no consciousness of class or standing. Everybody can be the machine’s slave or master.
Joost Schmidt Bauhaus exhibition
Weimar 1923
Haus-am-Horn
living room + kitchen Bauhaus exhibition, 1923
Vladimir Tatlin “Monument to the Third International”
1919
Soviet Constructivism
art and technology “a new unity” 1923, Bauhaus products
Student Workshop Building, Bauhaus, Dessau, Germany, 1926
Bauhaus Institute for Design, Dessau, 1926
Marianne Brandt, self-portrait, metal workshop, Dessau, c.1926
photograms, László Moholy-Nagy, 1922-43
Marianne Brandt, ashtray, metal workshop, Dessau, c.1926
Marcel Breuer, Model B3 for Thonet, Dessau, 1925-26
Marcel Breuer, B32 for Thonet, Dessau, 1928
Herbert Bayer, universal alphabet, 1926
There is a strong parallel between the prominent role of such “empty” white space in these layouts and the sparsely-furnished interior of the Haus-am-Horn and other experimental housing projects being planned during the same years. In these projects white walls dominated and space “materialized” in relation to standard rectangular tables, chairs, and shelves. In this way mechanized mass production, involving standardization and uniformity, was, at least symbolically, linked to a universal and egalitarian socialist vision for the society of the future.
David Raizman, “The Bauhaus” History of Modern Design