UC San Diego Global Seminars: Weimar - Modernism and Design: The Bauhaus Experience in Germany

The Bauhaus School, founded in Weimar, Germany in 1919, was one of the 20th century’s most influential sites for art, architecture, design, and urban planning innovation. At the forefront of the emerging International Style which contributed to the launch of Modernism, its approach to design theory, pedagogy, and practice was revolutionary as it adopted an anti-historical and anti-monumental approach much more focused on purity of form, color, and function. It also pioneered an innovative approach to education that focused on the productive workshop as a studio space for students to engage in hands-on, applied learning. Forced to change locations twice (first to Dessau and then Berlin), it was ultimately pressured to close by the Nazis in 1933. Several years after the reunification of Germany in the early 1990s, Bauhaus University, Weimar (BUW) returned to its intellectual roots and is again at the leading edge of pedagogy, research, and practice in architecture and urban planning. This Global Seminar focuses on the history, contradictions, and legacy of the Bauhaus School and its underlying philosophy as a lens into the larger International Style in architecture and planning across the world. This Global Seminar will introduce students to critical architecture and urban planning theory and history in conjunction with a design school studio experience that will enable them to apply concepts to their own designs and create work to include in their personal portfolios. Students will also benefit from the opportunity to live and study in a quintessential European college town.