bauhaus forever
Nico Weber
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Nico Weber
bauhaus forever, 2023 and 2025
In 2023, Ark Rex's program featured a 45-minute work-in-progress that in a way previewed a film to be screened in the 2025 festival program – Work in Progress: Editor's Cut.
It could be seen as unfinished: raw, fragmentary, a discussion and open experiment by the filmmaker with the subject and people themselves.
Two years later, the film has undergone quite a mutation: it has grown, cracked, and rebuilt itself. It is still like an unfinished construction site, like a Denkraum. That is: a space for thoughts, but now also an almost finished piece of architecture.
Anyone who thinks they've already "seen" this film when it was only screened as a work in progress is sorely mistaken. The shorter film in 2023, in a way, tried to represent something like a scaffolding. This over an hour and a half long film essay, created in 2025, can, instead, almost be compared to an (almost) finished and unique house.
bauhaus forever
A film about a house that doesn't exist. A film about an archive without a building or a home. A school that was much more than a school. It was the most influential art school of the 20th century, reshaping and changing art, design and life, and which still refuses to cease to exist.
The film follows the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung in Berlin, which guards and manages the world's largest and most valuable Bauhaus collection. Closed since 2018, the museum remains in a state of stagnation in its own way, delaying its settlement in a place that never seems to be completed. The iconic building, which is protected as an architectural monument and designed by Walter Gropius, remains closed; the completion of the museum and the opening of the exhibitions have been postponed until 2027. Next to the original building, which was first planned for Darmstadt, rises a brand-new extension designed by Staab Architekten – a concrete continuation of the original and, for several unfortunate reasons, repeated delays and complications related to the construction work. Next to it, a completely new filigree tower is already almost finished, the kind of which could not have been realised a hundred years ago. In our digital age and new means of engineering and calculating, it has been possible.
The cinematic essay has seven chapters, like seven bridges. It reminds us of a kaleidoscope: images flash like breaths; the pulse of dust, neon lights and sounds echoes in unfinished rooms. Past and present collide. Nothing is explained; everything is suggested.
The focus is on the myths that surround the famous manifesto and school, and all the people who have kept them alive: archivists and researchers whose passion binds them to both the binding legacy and the place, even when patience and budgets have been tight. The unfinished building becomes a metaphor: interruption and perseverance, the hope of filling the gaps. One hundred years after the opening of the main building in Dessau, bauhaus forever!
The work asks what the Bauhaus can still mean in our times of crisis, when the winds blowing from the United States are driving a “return” to classicism. But in the north, here in Europe, modernism never died.
bauhaus forever. It is not a lesson but an experience – a film built like a house, a Denkraum, a space of thought and a world to enter and wander and return to.
Fragile, broken, yet alive.
The text is an adaptation of the director's synopsis, originally written for Ark Rex in English
In 2023, Ark Rex's program featured a 45-minute work-in-progress that in a way previewed a film to be screened in the 2025 festival program – Work in Progress: Editor's Cut.
It could be seen as unfinished: raw, fragmentary, a discussion and open experiment by the filmmaker with the subject and people themselves.
Two years later, the film has undergone quite a mutation: it has grown, cracked, and rebuilt itself. It is still like an unfinished construction site, like a Denkraum. That is: a space for thoughts, but now also an almost finished piece of architecture.
Anyone who thinks they've already "seen" this film when it was only screened as a work in progress is sorely mistaken. The shorter film in 2023, in a way, tried to represent something like a scaffolding. This over an hour and a half long film essay, created in 2025, can, instead, almost be compared to an (almost) finished and unique house.
bauhaus forever
A film about a house that doesn't exist. A film about an archive without a building or a home. A school that was much more than a school. It was the most influential art school of the 20th century, reshaping and changing art, design and life, and which still refuses to cease to exist.
The film follows the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung in Berlin, which guards and manages the world's largest and most valuable Bauhaus collection. Closed since 2018, the museum remains in a state of stagnation in its own way, delaying its settlement in a place that never seems to be completed. The iconic building, which is protected as an architectural monument and designed by Walter Gropius, remains closed; the completion of the museum and the opening of the exhibitions have been postponed until 2027. Next to the original building, which was first planned for Darmstadt, rises a brand-new extension designed by Staab Architekten – a concrete continuation of the original and, for several unfortunate reasons, repeated delays and complications related to the construction work. Next to it, a completely new filigree tower is already almost finished, the kind of which could not have been realised a hundred years ago. In our digital age and new means of engineering and calculating, it has been possible.
The cinematic essay has seven chapters, like seven bridges. It reminds us of a kaleidoscope: images flash like breaths; the pulse of dust, neon lights and sounds echoes in unfinished rooms. Past and present collide. Nothing is explained; everything is suggested.
The focus is on the myths that surround the famous manifesto and school, and all the people who have kept them alive: archivists and researchers whose passion binds them to both the binding legacy and the place, even when patience and budgets have been tight. The unfinished building becomes a metaphor: interruption and perseverance, the hope of filling the gaps. One hundred years after the opening of the main building in Dessau, bauhaus forever!
The work asks what the Bauhaus can still mean in our times of crisis, when the winds blowing from the United States are driving a “return” to classicism. But in the north, here in Europe, modernism never died.
bauhaus forever. It is not a lesson but an experience – a film built like a house, a Denkraum, a space of thought and a world to enter and wander and return to.
Fragile, broken, yet alive.
The text is an adaptation of the director's synopsis, originally written for Ark Rex in English
Nico Weber
bauhaus forever, 2023 and 2025
In 2023, Ark Rex's program featured a 45-minute work-in-progress that in a way previewed a film to be screened in the 2025 festival program – Work in Progress: Editor's Cut.
It could be seen as unfinished: raw, fragmentary, a discussion and open experiment by the filmmaker with the subject and people themselves.
Two years later, the film has undergone quite a mutation: it has grown, cracked, and rebuilt itself. It is still like an unfinished construction site, like a Denkraum. That is: a space for thoughts, but now also an almost finished piece of architecture.
Anyone who thinks they've already "seen" this film when it was only screened as a work in progress is sorely mistaken. The shorter film in 2023, in a way, tried to represent something like a scaffolding. This over an hour and a half long film essay, created in 2025, can, instead, almost be compared to an (almost) finished and unique house.
bauhaus forever
A film about a house that doesn't exist. A film about an archive without a building or a home. A school that was much more than a school. It was the most influential art school of the 20th century, reshaping and changing art, design and life, and which still refuses to cease to exist.
The film follows the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung in Berlin, which guards and manages the world's largest and most valuable Bauhaus collection. Closed since 2018, the museum remains in a state of stagnation in its own way, delaying its settlement in a place that never seems to be completed. The iconic building, which is protected as an architectural monument and designed by Walter Gropius, remains closed; the completion of the museum and the opening of the exhibitions have been postponed until 2027. Next to the original building, which was first planned for Darmstadt, rises a brand-new extension designed by Staab Architekten – a concrete continuation of the original and, for several unfortunate reasons, repeated delays and complications related to the construction work. Next to it, a completely new filigree tower is already almost finished, the kind of which could not have been realised a hundred years ago. In our digital age and new means of engineering and calculating, it has been possible.
The cinematic essay has seven chapters, like seven bridges. It reminds us of a kaleidoscope: images flash like breaths; the pulse of dust, neon lights and sounds echoes in unfinished rooms. Past and present collide. Nothing is explained; everything is suggested.
The focus is on the myths that surround the famous manifesto and school, and all the people who have kept them alive: archivists and researchers whose passion binds them to both the binding legacy and the place, even when patience and budgets have been tight. The unfinished building becomes a metaphor: interruption and perseverance, the hope of filling the gaps. One hundred years after the opening of the main building in Dessau, bauhaus forever!
The work asks what the Bauhaus can still mean in our times of crisis, when the winds blowing from the United States are driving a “return” to classicism. But in the north, here in Europe, modernism never died.
bauhaus forever. It is not a lesson but an experience – a film built like a house, a Denkraum, a space of thought and a world to enter and wander and return to.
Fragile, broken, yet alive.
The text is an adaptation of the director's synopsis, originally written for Ark Rex in English
In 2023, Ark Rex's program featured a 45-minute work-in-progress that in a way previewed a film to be screened in the 2025 festival program – Work in Progress: Editor's Cut.
It could be seen as unfinished: raw, fragmentary, a discussion and open experiment by the filmmaker with the subject and people themselves.
Two years later, the film has undergone quite a mutation: it has grown, cracked, and rebuilt itself. It is still like an unfinished construction site, like a Denkraum. That is: a space for thoughts, but now also an almost finished piece of architecture.
Anyone who thinks they've already "seen" this film when it was only screened as a work in progress is sorely mistaken. The shorter film in 2023, in a way, tried to represent something like a scaffolding. This over an hour and a half long film essay, created in 2025, can, instead, almost be compared to an (almost) finished and unique house.
bauhaus forever
A film about a house that doesn't exist. A film about an archive without a building or a home. A school that was much more than a school. It was the most influential art school of the 20th century, reshaping and changing art, design and life, and which still refuses to cease to exist.
The film follows the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung in Berlin, which guards and manages the world's largest and most valuable Bauhaus collection. Closed since 2018, the museum remains in a state of stagnation in its own way, delaying its settlement in a place that never seems to be completed. The iconic building, which is protected as an architectural monument and designed by Walter Gropius, remains closed; the completion of the museum and the opening of the exhibitions have been postponed until 2027. Next to the original building, which was first planned for Darmstadt, rises a brand-new extension designed by Staab Architekten – a concrete continuation of the original and, for several unfortunate reasons, repeated delays and complications related to the construction work. Next to it, a completely new filigree tower is already almost finished, the kind of which could not have been realised a hundred years ago. In our digital age and new means of engineering and calculating, it has been possible.
The cinematic essay has seven chapters, like seven bridges. It reminds us of a kaleidoscope: images flash like breaths; the pulse of dust, neon lights and sounds echoes in unfinished rooms. Past and present collide. Nothing is explained; everything is suggested.
The focus is on the myths that surround the famous manifesto and school, and all the people who have kept them alive: archivists and researchers whose passion binds them to both the binding legacy and the place, even when patience and budgets have been tight. The unfinished building becomes a metaphor: interruption and perseverance, the hope of filling the gaps. One hundred years after the opening of the main building in Dessau, bauhaus forever!
The work asks what the Bauhaus can still mean in our times of crisis, when the winds blowing from the United States are driving a “return” to classicism. But in the north, here in Europe, modernism never died.
bauhaus forever. It is not a lesson but an experience – a film built like a house, a Denkraum, a space of thought and a world to enter and wander and return to.
Fragile, broken, yet alive.
The text is an adaptation of the director's synopsis, originally written for Ark Rex in English
bauhaus forever, 2025. Nico Weber. 95 min.
