Technology and Progress
The Bauhaus, or ‘The School of Building’ is the one of the most well known design schools in the world and known for its revolutionary principles of teaching, methodology and style. Founded by Walter Gropius in 1919, the school aimed to combine the artistic creativity and expressiveness of fine art, with the processes and functionality of craftsmanship and technology. This goal to disregard the conventional distinctions between the two, lead to a innovative pedagogical style which has since influenced design and teaching around the world.
Today, almost all design and art institutions have the adopted the Bauhaus model of a preliminary foundation course in which students experiment with fundamental design and art ideas. The broad first semester, or ‘Vorkurs’ as is was known as at the Bauhaus school, focused on bringing together many different disciplines, processes and techniques. This introductory course, lead by Johannes Itten, encouraged a “new way of seeing” and is very similar to the First Year Design (FYD) programme at Victoria University Faculty of Architecture and Design. The FYD programme encourages the same sensory exploration as the Bauhaus School, through feeling, thinking, trusting and engaging intuition and intellect and practising expression and construction.
The ‘Vorkurs’ helped students to develop a base understanding of design theory and practise these skills, ensuring that decisions concerning a design specialisation were not made too early. This notion is similar to FYD as all students study the same papers in the first year and choose between Culture and Context, Media and Industrial Design in the second year. Assignments for the FYD students focus on conceptual experimentation, exploring ideas such as rhythm, balance, symmetry, contrast and movement, and illustrate clear links to the teaching methods of Itten.
Both design schools have very intellectual undertones in comparison to other schools which have a more hands on focus. This academic approach, inspires forward thinking and promotes the idea that design can be utilised for the betterment of society. The Bauhaus movement is associated with the advancement of German culture and design and the reaffirmation of status after the First World War. The Victoria University design programme encourages this same idea of design being instrumental in the betterment of the world in a time of uncertainty and turmoil.
