The Bauhausian view

What “Bauhausian” means today

Bauhausian is not a style, but a method: disciplined choice about how you structure your questions before shaping things. It views design as a social and editorial act where structure is a prerequisite for clarity, rather than restrictive to creativity.

Being Bauhausian means prioritize thinking before styling, systems before objects, responsibility before aesthetics, and learning before certainty. It was the historic Bauhaus (1919-1932) that first hailed design a ‘multi-disciplinary project’ but brought this to bear in the editorial, digital and organisational.

From Bauhaus to Bauhausian

Bauhaus emerged from crisis: war, economic collapse, technological disruption and social fracture. It responded by rethinking how we live, learn and work together uniting art, craft and industry under the aim that the ultimate goal of all visual arts is the complete building.

The Bauhaus objected decorative ornamentation and advocated clarity and functional form. It also embraced technology and culture integration. Many modern designs still reflect these principles. However, in 1933, the school met its demise, curtailing many of its educational and social experiments.

The Bauhausian lens on the present

Bauhausian begins from the observation that our crises are different in tools but similar in structure: global systems, accelerated production, digital platforms, unequal access and environmental urgency. In a world where design decisions scale instantly through platforms and infrastructures, the claim that design is never neutral becomes more urgent, not less.

Through a Bauhausian lens, function is never merely technical; it includes bodies and their needs, communities and their habits, economies and their constraints, societies and their values. A chair, an app or an AI system are read not only as objects but as parts of systems that distribute visibility, power, attention and risk.​

Principles of a Bauhausian view

A Bauhausian view can be summarised in a series of interlinked principles that extend – rather than imitate – the historical Bauhaus.

• Design is a social act: every decision shapes behaviour, access, inclusion and exclusion.

• There is no neutral design: all objects, systems and spaces carry values and assumptions.

• Form is not the starting point: form is the consequence of purpose, context and use, not a mood board.

• Systems matter more than objects: design does not end at the artefact; it extends into practices, maintenance and governance.

• Knowledge grows when it is shared: collective experimentation and open education matter more than individual genius.

• Everyone can contribute: diversity of experiences is treated as a creative resource, not as noise to be normalised away.

These principles turn “Bauhausian” into an unfinished project: something to be practised, not a heritage label to be displayed.

Bauhaus and Bauhausian side by side

1. Core aim

• Historical Bauhaus:
  Unite art, craft and industry in the “complete building”.

• Contemporary Bauhausian view:
  Unite thinking, structure and responsibility in design practice.

2. Main arena

• Historical Bauhaus:
  Workshops, architecture, objects and typography.

• Contemporary Bauhausian view:
  Editorial platforms, systems, services and institutions.

3. Method

• Historical Bauhaus:
  Interdisciplinary, workshop-based learning.

• Contemporary Bauhausian view:
  Structured, modular editorial and research methods.

4. Crisis addressed

• Historical Bauhaus:
  Post-war reconstruction and industrial modernity.

• Contemporary Bauhausian view:
  Platform capitalism, digital ubiquity, climate crisis and social inequity.

5. Status today

• Historical Bauhaus:
  Historical reference and myth, often reduced to style.

• Contemporary Bauhausian view:
  Living attitude that resists nostalgia and demands reinterpretation.​​

Practising a Bauhausian view

To practise a Bauhausian view is to treat every project as a question before it is an answer. It means asking who is included, who is excluded, who decides and who benefits long before choosing a typeface or a grid.

In practical terms, this can look like using modular, transparent structures for research and publishing; building collaborative processes that make authorship porous; or designing tools that allow many different voices to reshape a system over time. It also means rejecting nostalgia disguised as innovation: reusing Bauhaus forms without re-engaging its critical, collective spirit is treated as repetition, not homage.

Under this view, the Bauhaus was unfinished by history, and Bauhausian remains deliberately unfinished by conviction. The task is not to preserve a museum of forms but to continue a social experiment in how we design, educate and live together, using today’s crises as material for new, shared structures of thought.