Bauhaus 100. Forma funzione utopia.

The contribution is intended to stimulate a reflection on the legacy of the Bauhaus experience, one century after its foundation. Part of the wider framework of the “Modern movement” and one of the pinnacles of the artistic avant-garde of the first half of the 20th century, the school founded by Walter Gropius and others raises several issues dealing with a range of ideas: the dialectic between utopia and design, the relationship between civilization and capitalist rationalization, the alternative between functional planning and the free creativity belonging to the artist or worker. Similarly to other attempts made by avant-garde in that period, the Bauhaus also set for itself the objective of reducing or eliminating the gap between art and everyday life. With the end of the “Modern movement” and the advent of “postmodernism” in the second half of the last century, this objective seems to have reached its theoretical and practical end. Despite its brief existence the historical parable of the Bauhaus (1919-1933) still offers us the chance to assess, today, whether its purposes, intentions and philosophy are still valid or not.