Bauhaus is architecture. Bauhaus is costume design. Bauhaus is textile design. Bauhaus is furniture. Nearing the end of the celebrated design school’s centenary, it has never been more clear that Bauhaus is everywhere, and Google Arts & Culture’s newest collection aims to make this revelation concise, user-friendly, and available to anyone with access to the internet.
Developed in collaboration with Bauhaus Dessau and six other partners including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the IIT Institute of Design, Bauhaus Everywhere is an online collection that educates visitors through interactive and immersive technologies ranging from animated video to augmented reality. The project has digitized over 10,000 objects, artworks, and virtual tours of iconic buildings through 45 digital exhibitions covering the vast perspectives of the Bauhaus’s life, pedagogy, and practice.
The first stop on the journey is through five animated videos in the form of minimalistic cartoons drawn using basic geometry and a primary color palette. “Take a look around, chances are there is a boxy building around that was inspired by the Bauhaus,” the second video states, demystifying some of the movement’s key characteristics and how we engage with its influence today. Keep scrolling and you will come to an introduction on what the Bauhaus is, and some insights from Dr. Claudia Perren, Bauhaus Dessau’s director, on her top ten favorite pieces from the museum’s collection.
Bauhaus Everywhere includes many glimpses into the institution that continues to guide the attitude and aesthetics of students within contemporary culture through inspirational “How-tos” such as “How to Dress Like a Bauhaus Student” and “How to Decorate your House, Bauhaus-Style.” One section titled, “What Was It Like To Study In the Coolest School Around?” provides an imaginative guide into student life from the application process, registering for classes, landing your first work-study job, meeting your teachers, and of course, going to the legendary parties. “You want to go to Bauhaus? Then show us what you’ve got. Put together a portfolio of samples of your work and send it to Mr. Gropius. He’ll decide if you have the aptitude…” the project reads.
Alongside street-view explorations of built sites such as the Moholy-Nagy House and the Gropius House, you can also explore unbuilt homes in 3D, or if you have the Google Arts & Culture App, in augmented reality. By examining “sketches, scribbles, and vague descriptions” Google has also created AR models of three visionary buildings including the Rundhaus by Carl Fieger and Marcel Breuer’s Bambos.
Other highlights include profiles of some of the key teachers, a section dedicated to the roles women played at the school, a Google Earth tour of Bauhaus-inspired sites around the world, and high-res closeups of paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Schlemmer, and Carl Marx, to name a few.
As Walter Gropius famously stated, “Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilized society.” Bauhaus is Everywhere goes to great lengths to prove his point.
