TINY [BAU]HAUS at Designmuseum Danmark
/This is a small travelling exhibition produced by a number of regional tourist organisations from Germany to promote the centenary anniversary year of the founding of the Bauhaus.
It was or should have been a good idea … a small simple pavilion transported from city to city to encourage tourists to visit exhibitions and buildings throughout Germany that are marking the achievements of this important design school that had and still has a remarkable influence on design practice and design teaching.
The small pavilion - created by DUS Architects from Amsterdam - is in part digitally printed, and uses materials that can be recycled and, with a foot print of eight square metres, has associated itself with the Tiny House movement so should tick the boxes.
And maybe there is an excuse because it is at the end of a long Europe wide tour because this is the last venue after Paris, Rotterdam, Barcelona, Marseille, Vienna, Prague, Budapest and Belgrade but it was certainly looking tired and worn from its journey.
The design appears to be only vaguely inspired by the Bauhaus - the fake-wood printed plastic lining of the interior seemed particularly inappropriate - and it is stretching it a little to claim that this is an example of Gesamtkunstwerck unless you assume that means simply designing the whole thing rather than meaning designing with care every feature and fitting to make a unified interior or building.
Films shown on the video inside whisked through material - some with avatars of key designers from the school and most changing images so quickly that clearly the aim was to speed ahead of kids with attention deficit disorder - and there were unfortunate phrases in the voice over like mentioning that the school “closed its doors in 1933.”
Printed hand outs from Dessau and Saxony-Annalt have good photographs and well-produced introductions but generally this is an unnecessary distraction from the important exhibition in the design museum itself.
TINY [BAU]HAUS on the road
is on the entrance court of the design museum
from 3 October to 31 October 2019
