The second Bauhaus Kolleg, which begins in September 2000, will examine the changes in architecture and the urban environment in an event-oriented society.
The urban entertainment culture of the 21st century has spawned a host of event worlds for shows, amusement and consumerism. Malls, theme parks, amusement centers and events are symbols of the cultural change accompanying the disintegration of the previously separate spheres of culture, politics, society and business. The marketing of cities and regions with spectacular presentations of history and culture and the redevelopment of city centers to create event spaces for shopping and entertainment are an eloquent expression of this development. In ever fewer cases is this process of urban reorganisation the product of town planning schemes devised by the public authorities.
The commercialisation of cities is being accompanied by a loss of public space, increasing controls and a growing exclusion of the poor and destitute. The commercialisation of culture is celebrating its triumphal march in the event city. Architecture, as an artistic product, is barely in a position to hold its ground against the powerful flow of cultural goods. It forms part of the window dressing which cities are using to generate an image for themselves.
The second Bauhaus Kolleg will focus on the changes in the urban environment brought about by the cultural revamping which cities are undergoing. It will investigate and analyse the changed conditions in the development of the urban environment in an event-oriented society with a view to drawing up design strategies for an event city beyond sprawl.
1st term September 1st 2000 to November 30th 2000
Event Worlds
The aim of the first term is to provide a comprehensive overview of the development trends in culture, society, economics, planning and architecture in the event-oriented society. It will deal with the theory and history, methodological access to and practical knowledge of the development of the event city. The first term will be divided up into two blocks. The lectures and seminars in the first block will provide an overview of the complexity of the event city. The workshops in the second block will focus on methods of studying and designing urban environments using the project location, the European quarter in Frankfurt, as an example. The teaching programme will be supplemented by excursions to urban event worlds in Germany and to the project location.
2nd term February 14th 2001 to May 11th 2001
Urban Spatial Node- an architectural blueprint
Frankfurt am Main is planning to erect a new district, the European quarter, around an urban entertainment center for shopping, entertainment and popular culture on disused railway sidings and a site not far from the exhibition center. This project is one of the many examples of urban redevelopment engineered by an alliance of private investors, trans-national companies and commercial architectural interests. The ensuing transfer of the center to a homogenised, commercialised and controlled event world is the subject of much discussion. The flashy shop window of a standardised urban future clearly reflects a loss of urbanity.
The Bauhaus Kolleg will devise a model for an urban entertainment center in the European quarter in Frankfurt as part of an architectural blueprint. It will be based on an understanding of the urban event world as an urban spatial node, as a flexible structure providing an interfusion of local and global space, commercialised cultural events and everyday cultural practices.
The 2. Trimester consists of two phases: exercise and design. The goal of the exercises is a broadening of current design tools and approaches of analysis as well as of design methods in architecture. This methodical didactical approach in the direction of a broadened perception is based on a changed role of architecture in the event city; a traditional analysis of typology and infrastructure can provide the production conditions for architecture only to a very limited degree.
Central to the exercises are two strategies: an intuitive playful and a systematic approach. These strategies are applied to three levels of the discourse, to the level of the city, the urban entertainment center, and to the design strategy.
3rd term - June 19th to September 14th 2001
Artscapes - art in practice
Artscapes is the term Arjun Appadurai applies to images of the here and now, images on which works of art are based and from which they derive their motivation. The suffix -scape refers to a recognition of the mobility of images and to the connections and relations between them. Heterogeneous cultural materials, scripts and images merge with one another to form urban spatial nodes in the urban event spaces. Artscapes take up the short-circuit between global flow and local images and the way they are changed and exchanged. They characterize the movement between images and the mass-cultural context of their production and provide an indication of the changeability of meanings.
The Bauhaus Kolleg will make use of artistic interventions in the form of artscapes to document the relations of visibility in the artificial environment of the urban entertainment center. They will thus be operating at the interface between what images in the city reveal and what remains hidden behind the surface of the images
The 3. term is divided into 2 sections: central to the analysis is the image research. Here the images that are at the base of the urban event spaces are investigated. The research of image typologies will discover what logic of representation is expressed, showing what is made visible and what remains invisible. The goal is to create an archive of different forms of making visible, of becoming an image or picture. This archive consists of three material parts: the image that we created in ourselves, those images found on site, as well as the collectively shared knowledge about these spaces.
The design process will use this reservoir of images: the different possibilities of art practice will be examined through the use of a specific medium or site.
APPLICATION DEADLINE : JULY 20 2000
PARTICIPATION REQUIREMENTS:
ACADEMIC DEGREE and/or SEVERAL YEARS PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE
in the following disciplines; architecture, art, urban and/or landscape planning, design, the social sciences or humanities, documented in a curriculum vitae.
PORTFOLIO
STATEMENT OF INTEREST
PROOF OF PROFICIENCY IN ENGLISH
KNOWLEDGE OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
BASIC SKILLS IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
BASIC SKILLS IN USING NEW MEDIA
A selection committee chooses a maximum of 25 international participants. Preference is given to those who apply for the entire year. Depending on course capacities, applicants may also be considered for an individual trimester.
TUITION FEES are 3000 DM per trimester. Not included are housing costs, living expenses, travel costs or study materials.
Possibilities of privately financed scholarships are constantly examined.
HOUSING ARRANGEMENTS
Both the studio wing of the historic Bauhaus building and the dormitory located ca. 4 km away offer accommodation at very reasonable rates.
For further information and reservation please contact the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation.
STUDY FACILITIES
The participants will have access to all facilities at the Bauhaus, including the library, archive, and media lab. Studio room equipped with work space and computer access will be provided.
Please contact:
Ute Lenssen
Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
BAUHAUS KOLLEG
Project Manager
Gropiusallee 38
06846 Dessau
Tel: ++49 (0)340-6508-402,
Fax: ++49 (0)340-6508-404
E-mail: lenssen@bauhaus-dessau.de
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