For the anniversary of the Bauhaus, and as a part of a large group project that aims to populate the distance between the Bauhaus Dessau and the new museum, Laura Baumann and I wanted to bring the "Gropius-Sessel" F51 from his "holy" directors office to the urban space. There, inhabitants and visitors of Dessau can use and experience it in a new context.
The cubic draft F51 was already crafted 1920 by Walter Gropius for an exhibition and served as an essential element of his holistic spacial composition, the directors office in Bauhaus Weimar. For having a talk with the director at that time, visitors were sitting on this conference chair, which was also crafted as a two seater. The holistic concept of space was developed by Gropius proceeding from a greek fret. So the orthogonal form can be found from the whole room through to the document shelf.
The chair itself has a specific importance, looking at its cantilever design it is considered to be an archetype of chairs with just two chair legs. That the F51 seems to float is one occasion for us to bring him into the urban space. The visitors chair appears alongside the passage as a whole but also in fragments which can be used as sitting accomodations and invite people to communicate and talk, while also serving as stage for other projects from the group. Some adaptations of the chair hint on the tensions between the foundation and the inhabitants of Dessau, as we discovered during our time in the city.
