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