Bauhaus Study Rooms 2021: Challenging Infrastructure Modernism

Study Rooms
Year after year, over one hundred people from all over the world are directly involved in the various educational programmes run by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation: the Coop Design Research MSc programme in collaboration with Anhalt University of Applied Sciences and Humboldt University Berlin; the Bauhaus Lab research programme in Global Modernism Studies; and the Bauhaus Open Studios teaching residency. Each of these programmes inscribes itself in the historical learning environment of the Bauhaus Building, with every participant becoming part of a network of learners and teachers. The Bauhaus Study Rooms were conceived in 2020 as an opportunity to intensively engage with the annual theme of the Foundation, and to consider it from the perspective of the three different programmes. By inviting alumnx from each programme, the Foundation aims to create a digital, temporary learning place, which allows to explore and experience the conditions of collective knowledge production.

In this second edition of the Bauhaus Study Rooms, designers, architects, and design researchers endeavour to disentangle the implicitly interwoven relation between modernism and its underlying organisational networks and facilities routing material flows. In a rich and varied curriculum comprising panel discussions, workshops, talks, and visual essays, they reposition the discourse on the notion of  “infrastructure” in the context of contemporary discussions and practices.

The event will be conducted as a Zoom webinar. To register, use the RSVP button above or click here. For a detailed schedule and more information, see bauhaus-dessau.de or send an e-mail to studyrooms [​at​] bauhaus-dessau.de.

Infrastructure: annual theme of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation in 2021

Modernism and its aesthetics are closely linked to images of power lines, airplanes, railroad bridges, and highways. While these infrastructure elements are given center stage as models of a new built environment in a variety of manifestos of modern architecture, their functional logics, their structures, resources, and interconnections remain obscure. In this respect, infrastructures constitute the fragile pillars of modernity that become visible and problematic only when there’s a power outage, when a gas pipeline explodes, etc.

The relational fabric between infrastructure and modernity, however, is also based on the promise of inclusion, provision, and integration—a double-edged sword given its foundation on the exploitation of resources in the Global South under the logic of development, perpetuating the colonial legacy.

Pipelines, highways, and electricity grids convey visions of progress. Far from being neutral, they are embedded in power relations and geopolitical interests. Infrastructures are instrumental in producing global geographies of inequality and segregation. At the same time, a radical rethinking of infrastructures is needed: no longer conceivable as something to be outsourced, infrastructures need to be as understood as an interconnected system of material cycles in which both human and non-human actors are involved on an equal footing.

What are the specific contributions that the field of design studies has to offer to a critical examination of these complex infrastructural interconnections which make everyday life in the 21st century so vulnerable? What imaginaries of a different nature-culture can emerge from ecologically oriented design research on infrastructure? What new forms of post-disciplinary collaborations and collective design activities with varied human and non-human actors are emerging in the field of infrastructure design?

With contributions by Gabriela Aquije, Mya Berger, Regina Bittner, Leticia M Brown, büros für konstruktivismus (Sandra Bartoli and Silvan Linden), Charlie-Anne Côté, Kenny Cupers, Chris Dähne, David Davalos Sanchez, Irma Del Valle Nachón, Nastasia Fomina, Ines Glowania, Gudskul (Muhammad Rifqi Fajri, Rifandi Nugroho, farid rakun), Sabine Hansmann, Brigitte Hartwig, Michael Hohl, Christian Holl, Ezgi İşbilen, Hannah Knox, Denisa Kollárová, Natalia Kvitkova, Joachim Krausse, Zainab Marvi, Kristine Pace, Divya R, Maryia Rusak, Friederike Schäfer, Angelika Schnell, Martha Schwindling, Amarjeet Singh Tomar, Daniel Springer, Tertia Tay, Léonie Thiroux, Gernot Weckherlin, Clemens Winkler, Michael Zinganel, Nilra Zoraloğlu, and many others.

The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation is a non-profit foundation under public law.