The Hannes Meyer Seminars at the Bauhaus Dessau (1980–1986) as a Contact Zone for Finnish and East German Architects

Authors

  • Torsten Lange ETH Zurich

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7480/footprint.14.1.4435

Abstract

This article charts transnational exchanges between East German and Finnish architects in the development of adaptive housing solutions for urban sites. It focuses on the Hannes Meyer Seminars – a series of annual international design workshops held at the Bauhaus Dessau from 1980 to 1986 – as a contact zone. The seminars challenged dominant forms of mass housing, and put forth alternative models to suit historic contexts. These exchanges went beyond previous (one-directional) material and technical exports that stretched back as far as the mid-1950s. As a result of the policy of détente in the early 1970s, relations between Finland and the GDR began to form an ever more complex and entangled network, with greater emphasis on knowledge transfer and collaboration. Formal agreements on ‘scientific and technical cooperation’ thus provided the framework for the intensification of contacts between design schools such as the College for Architecture and Civil Engineering (HAB, Hochschule für Architektur und Bauwesen) in Weimar and the Technical University Tampere. This opened a dialogue about contextual design (the adaptation of industrialised housing to the different needs and lifestyles of individual users), as well as historic settings, new tools such as CAD/CAM, sociological and historical research, and the discourse of postmodernism.

Author Biography

Torsten Lange, ETH Zurich

Torsten Lange is lecturer at the Institute gta, ETH Zurich and August-Wilhelm-Scheer Visiting Professor at TU Munich. He studied at the Bauhaus University Weimar, and the Bartlett School of Architecture, London. His dissertation focused on the theoretical underpinnings of late-socialist urbanism and the production of mass housing in the GDR. His publications include articles and chapters in edited volumes such as Industries of Architecture (Routledge, 2016) and Produktionsbedingungen der Architektur (Thelem, 2018). He was one of the coordinators of the research and publication project East West Central: Re-Building Europe, 1950–1990 (Birkhäuser, 2017).

References

Abkommen über diplomatische Beziehungen zwischen Finnland und der DDR paraphiert. Dresden: Verlag Zeit im Bild, 1972.

Barck, Simone, Martina Langermann and Siegfried Lokatis, eds. Zwischen "Mosaik" und "Einheit": Zeitschriften in der DDR. Berlin: Ch. Links, 1999.

Bauforschung – Baupraxis. Bauen in der Stadt, no. 252 (1989).

Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, ed. Bauhaus global: gesammelte Beiträge der Konferenz bauhaus global vom 21. bis 26. September 2009. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2009.

Bernhardt, Christoph, Thomas Flierl and Max Welch-Guerra, eds. Städtebau-Debatten in der DDR: Verborgene Reformdiskurse. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2012.

Eskola, Tapani et al., eds. 79 – Finnischer Wohnungsbau. Helsinki: Institut für Bauinformation, 1979.

Flierl, Bruno. Kritisch Denken für Architektur und Gesellschaft: Arbeitsbiographie und Werkdokumentation, 1948–2006. Erkner: IRS, 2007.

———. Gebaute DDR: Über Stadtplaner, Architekten und die Macht. Berlin: Verlag für Bauwesen, 1998.

Goetze, Hans. “Das 6. Hannes-Meyer-Seminar am Bauhaus Dessau”. Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der HAB Weimar 33, no. 4/5/6 (1987), 340.

Grönwald, Bernd. “Entwürfe zur Stadterneuerung – 4. Hannes-Meyer-Seminar”. Form + Zweck 17, no. 1 (1985), 35.

———. “Das 4. Hannes Meyer Seminar im 35. Jahr der DDR – Ein Beitrag zur Lösung neuer Aufgaben des Wohnungsbauprogrammes der DDR”. Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der HAB Weimar 30, no. 4 (1984), 199–208.

———. “Architekturfortschritt heute und für morgen”. Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der HAB Weimar 29, no. 5/6 (1983), 351–355.

———. “III: Hannes Meyer Seminar am Bauhaus Dessau”. Architektur der DDR 32, no.8 (1982), 509.

———. “Kulturpolitische Bedeutung und gesellschaftliche Wirkung der Pflege und Aneignung des Bauhauserbes in der DDR”. Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der HAB Weimar 26, no. 4/5 (1979), 309–312.

Hannemann, Christine. Die Platte: industrialisierter Wohnungsbau in der DDR. Berlin: Schiler, 2005.

Hentilä, Seppo. Neutral zwischen den beiden deutschen Staaten: Finnland und Deutschland im Kalten Krieg. Berlin: BWV Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag, 2006.

Kaipia, Juoni, Tehdään betonista: concrete in Finnish architecture. Helsinki: Museum of Finnish Architecture, 1989. Exh. cat.

Kettunen, Pauli. “The Nordic Welfare State in Finland”. Scandinavian Journal of History 26, no. 3 (2001), 225-47.

Korvenmaa, Pekka, ed. The Work of Architects: The Finnish Association of Architects 1892-1992. Helsinki: The Finnish Building Centre, 1992.

———. Finnish design: a concise history. Helsinki: University of Art and Design, 2009, 2nd. ed.

Koskiaho, Briitta, Timo Tanninen, Fred Staufenbiel and Karin Brand, eds. Lebensweise und Lebensniveau: Wohnen und Wohnumwelt. Tampere: Finnpublishers, 1979.

Merkel, Ina. Utopie und Bedürfnis: Geschichte der Konsumkultur in der DDR. Köln: Böhlau, 1999.

Oswalt, Philipp, ed. Bauhaus-Streit, 1919–2009: Kontroversen und Kontrahenten. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2009.

Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Profession (1991), 33-40. www.jstor.org/stable/25595469.

Putensen, Dörte. Im Konfliktfeld zwischen Ost und West: Finnland, der Kalte Krieg und die deutsche Frage 1947-1973. Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 2000.

Rubin, Eli. Amnesiopolis: Modernity, Space, and Memory in East Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Stanek, Łukasz. Architecture in Global Socialism: Eastern Europe, West Africa and the Middle East in the Cold War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020.

———. “Socialist Networks and the Internationalization of Building Culture after 1945”. ABE Journal [Online], no. 6 (2014). URL: http://journals.openedition.org/abe/1266.

———. “Introduction: the ‘Second World's’ architecture and planning in the ‘Third World’”. The Journal of Architecture, 17:3 (2012), 299-307.

DOI: 10.1080/13602365.2012.692597.

Thöner, Wolfang, Claudia Perren and Stiftung Bauhaus-Dessau, eds. A progressive Bauhaus legacy: the development of an East German Bauhaus collection. Leipzig: Spector Books, 2019.

Weber, Jos. “I. Internationales Walter-Gropius-Seminar am Bauhaus Dessau”. Architektur der DDR 38, no. 8 (1988), 43–46.

Wohnumwelt in Finnland. Helsinki: Finnisches Architekturmuseum, 1979.

Downloads

Published

2020-07-16