A Bauhaus Bus to “Unlearn” the School’s Legacy

To mark the centenary of the creation of the legendary school, the collective SAVVY Contemporary has put the vehicle on the road to “unlearn” and commemorate its legacy.

Image of the bus from the Spinning Triangles project. At dezeen.com

A hundred years have now passed since Walter Gropius founded the famous Bauhaus in the city of Dessau. Just four years later the institution was shut down by the Nazi party, but its influence has endured across the decades, in the visual arts as much as in design and architecture. To celebrate and recall the moment of its creation, a century on the design collective SAVVY Contemporary has launched a project called Spinning Triangles, whose centerpiece is a bus designed in the image and likeness of the famous building that once housed the school. The bus, or Wohnmaschine (living machine), began its journey in Dessau, Germany, and will continue its travels through Kinshasa, Berlin and Hong Kong. The collective’s purpose includes informing people about the Bauhaus legacy, but also “unlearning” its Eurocentric influences. In their own words, the project is based on the Bauhaus ideals; but “not only to repeat them, but to change them. We will create a design school equipped to face the challenges of the ‘now,’ and which could, precisely, become a ‘non-school'”.

Start of the Wohnmaschine bus tour. Via SAVVY Contemporary

“This school,” they continue, “will not develop around the geopolitical West, but around the accelerated movement that runs between four interconnected places: Dessau, Kinshasa, Berlin and Hong Kong”. The bus has been designed by Van Bo Le-Mentzel and houses a classroom of 15 square meters. Inside there is an area for exhibitions and workshops, as well as a small library with books devoted to the Bauhaus and its legacy. After the project’s start in Dessau the bus will head to Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo), where a series of workshops and symposia will be held aimed at reconceiving the environments around us, with a view to making a collective future viable. There the prototype of a new “school” will be created, one that will travel to Berlin, where 40 students will “learn and unlearn” the premises developed. To round off the journey the school will travel to Hong Kong, where the Para Site art space will be transformed.

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