Summer School at Bauhaus Dessau 2012: Didactic Home

How do we want to live? This year once again the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation is hosting an international Summer School. This will take place from 21st to 31st July 2012 and will be called “Didactic Home”. The participants will work in four design workshops on the themes of consumer education, community living, smart living and life as a prosumer. The workshop supervisors are respectively international architects, artists and designers. Workshop I: Educating Consumers Supervised by Evert Ypma (Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts), this workshop will seek new strategies for the housing realities of the 21st century based on the example of the marketing of Walter Gropius’ Director’s House. The focus is on the importance of the imagination of a “home”. The workshop explores modern approaches to the education of the consumer. Workshop II: Co-Housing Supervised by raumlabor berlin (Matthias Rick of Aalborg University and Christof Mayer), this workshop scrutinises the standardised mass construction of GDR housing based on housing type WBS 70, and looks for new ways of living in communities based on solidarity and at the impact of such models. Workshop III: Dwelling Machine Supervised by Ben Hooker (Art Center College of Design, Pasadena) “Dwelling Machine” further develops the Fordist housing model of the Bauhaus’ prototype housing development Dessau-Törten, moving towards "Smart Living". The design development of such concepts must relate to the relationship between modern technologies for climate-conscious living and individual demands. Workshop IV: Prosumer Supervised by Ton Matton (Werkstatt Wendorf) the fourth workshop is dedicated to new, contemporary ways of living based on the example set by the Knarrberg prototype housing development in Dessau designed by Leberecht Migge und Leopold Fischer. As prosumers, the protagonists are the producers and consumers of their own living environment. The goal of the workshop is to open up a path between orderly efficiency and exciting lifestyles through process and object design. Applications for the Summer School will be accepted until 31st May 2012 (recently extended!) at www.bauhaus-dessau.de/didactichome. The plan is to show the best works from 25th to 28th October 2012 at the Designers’ Open Festival “smart technology – new design” in Leipzig. Flyer (PDF)