The ‘Bye Bye Bauhaus’ Symposium, organised by Kent School of Architecture and Planning Lecturer, Professor Alan Powers, in conjunction with the Twentieth Century Society will be held at the University of Westminster School of Architecture on 30 November 2019.
The Bye Bye Bauhaus one-day symposium offers new perspectives and stories that have not yet been told, concerning design in Germany and Britain during the past century. The programme includes Professor Gerald Adler, Head of School, Kent School of Architecture and Planning, who has recently been commissioned by Bloomsbury to write a monograph on Heinrich Tessenow, the German ‘reform’ architect.
Professor Alan Powers comments, ‘For me, the Bauhaus centenary this year has been a fascinating thing to be part of, with my book, Bauhaus Goes West, published in February by Thames and Hudson, and getting quite widely reviewed, and a lot of other activities around the theme of how Britain related to the Bauhaus. My conference is a miscellany rather than a thesis as the centenary year draws towards its end. While the Bauhaus itself continues to be a subject of interest, it is the peripheral things about Germany and Britain that offer scope for new discoveries, and the event on 30 November brings together a lot of disparate knowledge in ways that I think will be new to a lot of the audience. It is great that we are still within the range of direct memory of some of the people involved, including my panel at the end about people who were students at the Bauhaus and then came to Britain.’
The symposium opens with Richard Hollis on the Belgian Art Nouveau designer Henry van de Velde, includes Dr David Haney, author of When Modern was Green (2010), and Professor Frederic Schwartz, UCL who poses the question, ‘What was the Bauhaus?’. The afternoon programme includes Valeria Carullo, Curator at the RIBA British Architectural Library, Sophie Jump, theatre designer and the final session introduces five lesser-known Bauhäusler in Britain: Jilly Allenby on her grandfather, the sculptor Johannes Ilmari Auerbach; Marcus Williamson on René Halkett, painter, designer broadcaster and lyricist for the punk band Bauhaus; John Allan on the graphic designer George Adams (Teltscher), Rachel Dickson on puppeteer Werner ‘Jacky’ Jackson and Danyel Gilgan on his grandfather, the maker and teacher Wilfred Franks.
Book your place online; tickets include refreshments with sandwich lunch and post-conference drinks.