reconstruction / design / site management
Today there are hardly any documentations or even construction plans available of this legendary exhibition in Palais Royal. Historical background as well as material, construction, dimensions and colouring had been researched by means of present-day photos and newspaper publications. On base of the result the Bauhaus Archives Berlin had developed new material and exhibition solutions.
Only a few modernist exhibitions have attained the degree of importance attached to the 1930 exhibition of the German Werkbund in Paris. It combined an uncompromising design approach with a new social model – the vision of modern life in a high-rise apartment building. Responsibility for the exhibition lay with Walter Gropius, who was joined by a team of previous Bauhaus colleagues: Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy.
For the first time since 1910, Germany was invited to participate in the annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes décorateurs (Association of French Interior Designers), which was held at the Grand Palais in Paris from 14th May to 13th July 1930. The Section allemande (German section) encompassed five large gallery spaces devoted to a theme chosen by Gropius: living in a ten-storey "boarding house".
With the 1930 Werkbund exhibition in Paris, Gropius and his team presented a radically modern view of Germany to an international audience. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the German Werkbund, the Bauhaus Archive has reconstructed the communal area, the architectural exhibit and parts of the theatre display from the seminal 1930 Section allemande in Paris.
