Lichtwechsel
An den Übergängen vom Kaleidoskopischen zum Stroboskopischen

This article is an example of “writing by being,” because the author had the privilege of being part of the pilot “batch” of Indian design teachers. These students, many from an engineering background, were to be India’s future design educators, and their first exposure to design education took place at the newly-founded National Institute of Design, India’s first design institute, established in 1961 and inspired to a large measure by Bauhaus ideology.

What is education; what are its means and ends; and when is it time to re-examine and re-imagine current educational practices? These are questions which the Bauhaus asked in its time and the exhibit bauhaus imaginista prompts us to ask of ourselves.

The conference A New School at Haus de Kulturen der Welt, Berlin on 11 May 2019 drew the intersecting contours of these questions and challenges through perspectives from Brazil, China, India, Germany, Great Britain, Nigeria, Rwanda and the USA.

Design works employing light refraction, fixation, and reflection were already a feature of László Moholy-Nagy’s teaching at the Bauhaus. When in the summer of 1937 Moholy followed Walter Gropius’s advice and accepted Norma K. Stahle’s invitation to head the New Bauhaus in Chicago, he lay great store by György Kepes’s help in setting up the school in the New World.