Conference "Schools of Arts and Crafts: Paving the way for a new architectural doctrine?"

What role did the School of Arts and Crafts, which was established in the second half of the 19th century, play in the search for a new architecture? How did the lessons differ from those at other educational institutions? How does it contribute to a new understanding of material, object and space? The aim of the event is to discuss the teaching of architecture at arts and crafts schools, which has received little attention to date, from a technical, didactic, personnel and structural perspective and to look at specific teaching concepts and content that were practiced at the schools locally or nationally.

Since the second half of the 19th century, arts and crafts schools have played a role in architectural education that should not be underestimated, alongside technical colleges, academies and building trade schools. In the course of the transformation of the polytechnic schools into technical colleges and the accompanying academization of their education, their clientele changed, as the Abitur was now a prerequisite for admission. For pupils with artistic, craft and technical talents who did not have a university entrance qualification, a gap arose into which the still young institution of the arts and crafts school moved. This had developed on the basis of the major trade shows at the world exhibitions in London in 1851 and 1862 and in Paris in 1867. In 1867, the association "Deutsches Gewerbe-Museum zu Berlin" founded the Kunstgewerbemuseum zu Berlin to promote the arts and crafts industry and in 1868 the associated "Unterrichts-Anstalt", based on the English model. Numerous other arts and crafts schools were quickly established throughout the empire, but only a few included special architecture classes in their curriculum alongside subjects such as ornamental and figure drawing, modeling, sculpture or decorative painting. Around 1900, however, the young school format began to gain momentum in the wake of the arts and crafts reform and the German Empire's simultaneous drive for commercial expansion, as well as the demands of the Deutscher Werkbund, which was founded in 1907.
Deutscher Werkbund, founded in 1907, the young school focused its teaching on the combination of art, craft and technology and the interaction of material, object and space, thus becoming the avant-garde engine of a new architecture.