Josef Albers’ Methodology 'Learning through Conscious Practice' As a Teaching Form for Education in Architecture

Abstract

The paper discuss the methodological turn that was brought by the pedagogical practice of Josef Albers at the Bauhaus from 1923 to 1933. This period is observed as the formative platform of Albers’ teaching model, which generated all his later artistic and pedagogical engagements. Although Albers’ courses were part of the training in a design-art school that changed its curricula several times over ten years, the emphasis here is placed on the intention of the Bauhaus to conceive design education as an (interdisciplinary) collaboration and as an anticipation of a new form of creativity directed toward the building “that would embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity.” Albers taught the preliminary course (Vorkurs) that preceded the craft-studies workshops and was intended to prepare students for the “conscious” treatment of materials. The written reflections on learning methods, which Albers developed while teaching in Vorkurs, expose the key notions of his forward-thinking pedagogical approach that is situated between material form, design education and architecture.