How did architecture, design and art transform from an aesthetic enterprise to serving the needs of the masses? And how did a single individual–and an outstanding representative of "radical modernism"--pursue his personal convictions in an age marked by war and totalitarianism in the name of the collective? These questions frame this comprehensive life story of Hannes Meyer, who as an upstart architect in Basel, director of the Bauhaus in Germany, urban planner near the China-Russian border, and designer of social housing and hospitals in Mexico, fought to affirm the rights of all to a life of comfort and human dignity while seeking to maintain his own identity in the process.
"Georg Leidenberger, for the first time brings to life this steadfast, difficult and polemical architect, portraying him in the whole breadth of his existence."-- Prof. Magdalena Droste, author of Bauhaus 1919-1933. Reform and Avantgarde
How did architecture, design and art transform from an aesthetic enterprise to serving the needs of the masses? And how did a single individual–and an outstanding representative of "radical modernism"--pursue his personal convictions in an age marked by war and totalitarianism in the name of the collective? These questions frame this comprehensive life story of Hannes Meyer, who as an upstart architect in Basel, director of the Bauhaus in Germany, urban planner near the China-Russian border, and designer of social housing and hospitals in Mexico, fought to affirm the rights of all to a life of comfort and human dignity while seeking to maintain his own identity in the process.
"Georg Leidenberger, for the first time brings to life this steadfast, difficult and polemical architect, portraying him in the whole breadth of his existence."-- Prof. Magdalena Droste, author of Bauhaus 1919-1933. Reform and Avantgarde
Table of Contents - Georg Leidenberger - List of illustrations - Preface and acknowledgements – Introduction - Childhood and Youth in Basel, 1889-1909 - Wanderjahre, 1909-1919 - From Freidorf (1921) to Freidorf (1925). A Housing Compound, two Publications and a Modernist Awakening," 1919-1925 - A Radical Modernist Directing the Bauhaus, 1926-1930 - Eclipsed Honeymoon in the Soviet Union, 1930-1936 , Interlude: Geneva, 1936-1939 - Everything here is vulkanisch’: Mexico, 1938-1949 - Rootless at Home. Lugano, Switzerland, 1949-1954 - Bibliographical essay - Bibliography
Georg Leidenberger is professor of 20th-century history at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City (UAM). He is a specialist in the history of architecture as well as urban society and politics and has published on the themes of public transportation, social housing and urban planning in Mexico, the United States and the trans-Atlantic region.
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