bauhaus world

What do escalators in Medellín, Arabic lettering in Amman, story-telling furniture from London, urban farming in Detroit and a co-living complex in Tokyo have to do with the Bauhaus?
The architect Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1919. He brought together some of the most illustrious artists in Europe to create a school that would fuse the fine arts and the crafts. Together, they set out to fundamentally rethink the world and society. Although the Bauhaus school – which later relocated to Dessau and then to Berlin – only existed for a few years, it revolutionized ideas about the organization of modern life. In 2019, the Bauhaus will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding. To mark the occasion, planetfilm has produced a series of three documentaries for Deutsche Welle. The films focus on the influence that the philosophy of the Bauhaus movement still exerts on the globalized society of the 21st century. They also explore historical parallels between 1919 and the present day: Society is facing major upheavals and challenges, just as it did back then.
We meet architects, urban planners, designers and artists from around the globe who, in the spirit of the Bauhaus, want to rethink and change the world. Tatiana Bilbao, for example, is a Mexican architect who has designed an 8,000 - dollar house for the poorest members of society. The designer Ahmed Humeid is working on plans to bring order to the traffic chaos of the Jordanian capital Amman. How and where will the world’s burgeoning population live in future? Minimalistically and collectively in tiny spaces, as the German architect Van Bo Le-Mentzel envisages it? Or maybe even on Mars? British star architect Sir Norman Foster has drawn up designs for a settlement there.
Segments on the history and philosophy of the Bauhaus provide context and background to some of today’s most pressing issues.

The series of documentaries:

01 The Code
What is the secret of the Bauhaus’s success?

02 The Effect
How were Bauhaus principles developed further?

03 The Utopia
A good life for all?