100 Years of the Bauhaus

A 2019 exhibition concept celebrating 100 years since the founding of the Bauhaus School in Germany. Hosted at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture.

100 Years of the Bauhaus explores the precursors to and influence of the Bauhaus School – specifically through graphic design history – proving how the school’s influence has affected both traditional print work and then-unimagined digital media. Das Staatliche Bauhaus was founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius, and influenced by William Morris’ Arts and crafts workshops the school chose to reject strict academia and combine the teaching of the fine and applied arts. The exhibit starts with examples of Expressionism, Dada, Constructivism and De Stijl which influenced early projects in the Bauhaus School. Next it explores the development of the Bauhaus’ dominant style and its association with the New Typography, finally tracing that influence through modern day graphic and web design. The identifiers used to qualify works for this exhibit will be the following: Order; asymmetry; rectangular grid structure; heavy rules, circles, and rectangles as decoration; and photography as illustration.

I was studying the History of Modern Design as I worked on this show and decided to include an accompanying catalogue of all original copy analyzing each work’s significance to the exhibition’s narrative. The 18-spread catalogue makes use of a flexible grid system which unifies the look and feel of the catalogue while allowing for unique layouts.

The 100 Years of the Bauhaus app was designed to accompany the user through the exhibit, marking their progress with a pulsing red block screen which shows between works and steadily grows to fill the screen as the visitor nears the end. It contains the museum labels, thumbnails of the work, and the catalogue’s analytical copy available as text and audio.

The scope of this project included mocking up wayfinding and environmental graphics for the exhibit. These are based on possible applications in the Tyler School of Art and Architecture building. The exhibit itself would go in chronological order of works, the same order as the app which would be used as a virtual tour guide to the show.

The exhibition website is a place to help users plan their visit, learn about the structure of the show, and be directed to the app. It gives them a taste of the interior look of the show and has a dedicated page for the catalogue.