To mark the 100th anniversary of the legendary German school Bauhaus, Germany's Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (German: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, ifa) began organizing the internationally traveling exhibition "The Whole World A Bauhaus (整個世界就是包浩斯)" in 2017.
Ifa moved "The Whole World A Bauhaus (整個世界就是包浩斯)" exhibition to Taiwan, following an invitation from the National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute (NTCRI) and a recommendation from the Goethe-Institut Taipei. After touring Argentina, Mexico, the United States, Uruguay, Germany, and Poland, the exhibition will run from Apr. 30 through July 17 at NTCRI, featuring nearly 500 exhibits including photographs, paper works, models, documents, videos, and articles that convey the spirit of the Bauhaus. Today, these have become the source of popularization of modernism.
Focusing on an aspect of work and life at the Bauhaus between 1919 and 1933, the exhibition is divided into eight different chapters, including “Floating,” “Experiment,” “Total Work of Art,” “Community,” “New Man,” “Art, Crafts, Technology,” “Radical Pedagogy” and “Encounters.”
The section on “Floating” explores the Bauhaus interest in motifs of weightlessness and also looks at how glass and skeleton frameworks dematerialized architecture, or how the cantilever chair resting on air became symbolic of an entire design movement. In “Experiment,” the section presents objects that were the result of new research into materials and space, and whose dimensions, proportions, and testing of materials were also designed to make mass production possible.
The Bauhaus, also known as the Staatliches Bauhaus (German for “building house”), is a German art school established in 1991. Founded by Walter Gropius, the school ultimately developed into its own modern art movement characterized by its unique approach to architecture and design. Today, Bauhaus is a rational, functional design aesthetic, taking a form follows function, less is more approach.