Conference: Bauhaus Matters

Immediately after its opening 1926, the Bauhaus Building was already being celebrated in professional journals as an agent of a new idea of architecture. Steel, glass concrete—central construction materials of the Bauhaus Building—were considered pioneering materials for modern industrial society. 
Charged with diverse attributions of meaning, ideological appropriations and one-sided interpretations, these materials contributed to the formation of the modern history of architecture: a narrative that even today assigns a key position to the Bauhaus Building.

As late as the 1990s, a greenhouse built from remnants of the celebrated window façade of steel and polished plate glass existed in Dessau. Its rusty fragments, long exposed to wind and rain, have since become part of the Building Research Archive of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. In addition to remnants of stucco from the time of construction, drainage pipes, and electrical cables, windows make up another cosmos of materials, one that tells of production, use, decay, ageing and destruction. Buildings are not immobile artefacts; they interact within their physical surroundings and social contexts. They are constantly changing: their materiality is formed in the course of production, appropriation, use, destruction and renovation. As a reservoir of material flows, economies and technologies, the Building Research Archive of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation preserves the activity of the modernist monument on Gropiusallee.

The conference Bauhaus Matters focuses on the tension that results from the complex and controversial narrative space of the Bauhaus. It reassesses the roles played both by the materials and by the unstable and fragile testimony of that era in architecture, taking them as the starting point for debates. It inquires about the ideas, regimes of knowledge and institutions that participated in the formation of this complex of narratives on modern architecture. As it shifts the perspective of historiography away from representative objects and architects towards events and activities of buildings, the conference also encompasses debates about ecologies of building today.

By focusing the multidimensional materiality of the Bauhaus, Bauhaus Matters seeks to contribute new perspectives on the narratives of modern architecture. The term “matter” has many connotations: it is understood in the sense of asking about current cultural and social relevance, but also as a physical, material activity that includes its processual and mutable qualities. The conference thus proposes new ways of looking at the Bauhaus as a material artefact that can be more than just exemplary re-readings of the building informing future preservation efforts. It is is rather conceived as an invitation to negotiate contemporary architectural approaches in dialogue with the modernist legacy of the Bauhaus.

This international conference is a joint project of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences. In three thematic blocks—“Building materials: Media of modernity,” “Architecture of the construction industry,” and “Building as assemblage”—it will drill deeply into the iconic building. In addition to lectures and panel discussions with international architecture scholars, historians, and practicing architects, a variety of tours of buildings in Dessau will encourage active dialogue.

Programme
Thursday, January 29, 2026
Bauhaus Building, auditorium

6pm: Welcome
6:10pm: Historical film collage—Introduction by Florian Wüst (film curator, Berlin)
6:30–8pm: Keynote lecture—Albena Yaneva (Politecnico di Torino)
From 8pm: Get-together, café-bistro at the Bauhaus

Friday, January 30, 2026
Bauhaus Building, auditorium

10am–12pm: Panel 1—Building materials: Media of modernity
Presentations and discussion. Moderated by Regina Bittner and Dorothea Roos (Bauhaus Dessau Foundation). Speakers: Kathleen James-Chakraborty (University College Dublin) / Robin Rehm (ETH Zürich) / Simon Mitchell (Oslo School of Architecture).
12:00–1:30pm: Lunch break, Bauhaus Building
1:30–3:30pm: Panel 2—Architecture of the construction industry
Presentations and discussion. Moderated by Stephan Pinkau (Anhalt University of Applied Sciences). Speakers: Kim Förster (University of Manchester) / Katie Lloyd Thomas (Newcastle University) / Monika Motylińska (Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space)
4:30pm: Coffee break, Bauhaus Museum Dessau
5pm: Contemporary film collage—Introduction by Florian Wüst (film curator, Berlin)
5:30–7:30pm: Panel 3—Building as assemblage
Panel discussion with statements. Moderated by Elke Beyer (Anhalt University of Applied Sciences). With Karola Dierichs, Robert Stock (Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) / Santiago del Hierro (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador) / Philipp Misselwitz (TU Berlin/Bauhaus Earth) / Hannah le Roux (University of Sheffield)
From 7:30pm: Reception

Saturday, January 31, 2026
10am–1pm: Site visits, Dessau-Törten and Building Research Archive