Nr
00163
Trigger
Project
Original Bauhaus Übungsbuch
Publisher
Prestel
Editors
Nina Wiedemeyer
Friederike Holländer
Year
2019
Client
Bauhaus Archiv
Text

This book complements the exhibition catalogue ‘Original Bauhaus’ and presents the Bauhaus as what it actually was: an art school. The two editors conducted research at the Bauhaus Archive and, with the help of worksheets, notes and other references they discovered, have reconstructed 50 teaching assignments from the Bauhaus preparatory course. These exercises are published in the ‘Original Bauhaus Workbook’, along with examples showing how the students solved them at the time, as well as commentary from contemporary experts on the exercises.

Catalogue accompanying the ‘Original Bauhaus’ exhibition at the Berlinische Galerie.

Interview: https://bauhauskooperation.de/magazin/vermitteln/ueben-heisst-erfahrungen-machen

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Unlike the exhibition catalogue ‘Original Bauhaus’, which we designed in parallel, this book is not presented in a prestigious and festive format with a linen cover and embossing. Instead, its design is simple and practical. The book is meant to get dirty. It is bound in greyboard (in german: Maschinengraupappe) and fits neatly on a photocopier. When open, it is exactly A3 size.

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The book contains teaching materials; it is a workbook – one that teachers can leave on the photocopier in the corridor. Through the visual concept, too, we have chosen to celebrate – rather than conceal – the aesthetics of working, archiving, collecting, dust and discovery. We have decided not to colour-correct, crop or retouch the images, but to leave them in their raw form as they were filed away in the archive. The fact that these are worksheets selected from the archive and stored there for 100 years – and not museum art – must not be lost. Black card, grey card, dog-eared pages, colour scales, archivists’ notes, printed scans: how beautifully and gracefully they hace withstood the ravages of time; how lovely the disorder within the orderly filing system.

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Book shop
Berlinische Galerie

Implementation:
Markus Stumpf