Festival
Architecture RADICAL
31 May – 2 June 2019
Employment Office by Walter Gropius, Bauhaus Museum Dessau
They amazed their contemporaries, and some of them were horrified. By the Bauhaus buildings in Dessau, the Bauhäusler created something radically new. Not only in their architecture. The Bauhaus buildings served as prototypes of modern life. The Bauhaus moved between radical utopia, societal visions and social realities. Much of what was radically foresighted and structurally realized for the first time has become standard today. However, which new concepts do we need for a future-oriented architecture? And is radicalism actually topical anymore? This is where the Festival Architecture Radical comes into play.
The Festival:
The Bauhaus buildings in Dessau are prototypes of radical designs for the future. They were developed for real life and tested in it. In the Festival Architecture Radical, the Bauhaus Dessau raises the question in how far architectural radicalism is still topical today. What should be the bases for the design of new architectures that are capable of creating a worldwide impact like the Bauhaus buildings? For three days, the Open Stage in the Dessau Bauhaus Museum and the Employment Office designed by Walter Gropius become the festival headquarters and in this way the authority for radically contemporary construction.
100 students of all design disciplines, who understand construction and architecture as a utopian task, are invited to the Festival Architecture Radical in Dessau. Attended by ten renowned architects, they are active in workshops with lectures and open space conferences, think and design, live and celebrate together in an atmosphere providing space for visions and utopias. At the end of the Festival, the students enter into a “battle” against each other by the results obtained in the workshops.
Based on designs of the participating architects, temporary installations are created at the festival locations, so-called Signature Architectures. As structural interventions, they make symbolically and radically functionally reference to the subjects of the festival. They stand for the Bauhaus strategy “inventing construction and exploring attention” (Josef Albers). They locate the festival visibly in the public space, are exemplary for the festival programme, and create atmospheric spaces inside and in front of the festival headquarters. At the end of the festival, elements of the Signature Architectures will be symbolically auctioned for the price of the best ideas for further use.
The following architects will participate
Anupama Kundoo
[ Berlin/Pondicherry ]
atelier le balto
[ Berlin ]
Andrej Bernik
[ Paris ]
Sam Chermayeff
[ Berlin ]
Frida Escobedo
[ Mexico City ]
Bruno Fioretti Marquez
[ Berlin ]
Andrés Jaque
[ Madrid ]
Jürgen Mayer H. and Philip Ursprung
[ Berlin and Zurich ]
Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli
[ Rotterdam ]
umschichten
[ Stuttgart ]
Wermke/Leinkauf
[ Berlin ]
Simultaneously to the Festival Architecture Radical, the Werkleitz Festival “Model and Ruin” will be held in Dessau.
The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation is a non-profit foundation under public law. It is institutionally funded by the German Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the State of Saxony-Anhalt, and the City of Dessau-Roßlau. The Festival Architecture Radical is generously funded by:
Kubra GmbH Industrie- und Kunststofftechnik, based in Oranienbaum-Wörlitz, OT Kapen, supports the studio "umschichten" in the realisation of its Signature Architecture with a loan of materials.
