Bauhaus Lab 2024: Exploring Pedagogies of Environmental and Social Unrest

The Bauhaus Lab 2024 exhibition and symposium, titled “On behalf of the environment. Pedagogies of unrest,” will take place from August 8, 2024, to April 21, 2025. This event delves into the history and impact of the Institut de l’Environnement, an interdisciplinary school in Paris that operated from 1969 to 1971. The institute was founded to explore the notion of the environment and develop teaching methods that matched its complexity, partly in response to the student protests of May ’68, which demanded less rigid pedagogy.

Directed by former HfG professor Claude Schnaidt, the institute aimed to become a model for pedagogical renewal and professional training, addressing the social need for environmental design education. It was a hub for shaping the emerging roles of designers and architects, fostering new forms of transdisciplinary research.

The participants of the Bauhaus Lab 2024 have investigated the internal activities of the institute and the cultural context of its time. The institute’s modular façade is viewed as a crucial membrane of exchange between the internal and external environments. The exhibition presents the history of the Institut de l’Environnement through various perspectives from Bauhaus Lab researchers, interconnected by the enduring question: what is the environment? This query continues to resonate today, facilitating conversations between archival material, personal experiences, and contemporary debates.

A symposium preceding the exhibition opening will feature programme participants discussing socially conscious design and environmental education with a range of guest speakers. This discussion will reassess the question, “What would our Institut de l’Environnement be?” against the backdrop of contemporary practices and perspectives.

“On behalf of the environment. Pedagogies of unrest” is a collective work developed by an international group of architects, designers, curators, and researchers within the 2024 edition of the Bauhaus Lab programme in Global Modernism Studies. The Bauhaus Lab 2024 participants include Elena Falomo, Felix Bell, Jie Shen, Louise Mazet, María Paszkiewicz, Or Haklai, Rafael Amato, and Teresa Häußler, with the support of Regina Bittner and Philipp Sack from the Bauhaus Foundation Dessau Academy.