Harald Kegler
Review and outlook
 
"The 21st century will either be a century of culture - or of nothing at all." (Laville, Leenhardt 1996, 15)


 

This dramatic exaggeration of society's prospects would appear to leave hardly any room for escape and, in consequence, to preclude any possibility of taking action. However, overstatements can serve to clarify positions.
 
After the catastrophe of the First World War, the first program formulated by the Bauhaus in 1919 called for a synthesis of culture for the purpose of designing a new world. "The ultimate, albeit distant, goal of the Bauhaus is that of the Gesamtkunstwerk - the great building - … ." (cited after Hüter 1976, 207) What is more: these master builders were to "build     ardens     from     deserts",     a

seemingly utopian anticipation of future building tasks. (Cf. Gropius 1919, 64)
 
At the start of a new millennium, reviewing or taking stock and examining the outlook is in vogue. Yet neither euphoric belief in progress nor the invocation of well-being and good is in itself capable of revealing options for shaping the future.
The century which is now drawing to a close brought forth the promise to design the environment we live in: industry and garden were to be reconciled, their contradictions resolved and this would, in consequence, lead to a new culture of urban space.  

 
This promise had tremendous suggestive and motivational force. The desire to achieve harmonization, the dissolution of contradictions in social, economic and aesthetic areas by means of design produced a wealth of ideas and practical experiments - but it remained no more than a wish. The notion of a century which would create a beautiful living environment harmoniously designed, free of antagonisms and harsh contradictions, can only be seen as having been in vain and misleading. Contradictions cannot be covered up or reconciled by technical means.
 
It has now been possible, at the turning point of industrialization, to put the promise of industry on the agenda: namely to make a humane utopia experienceable and, at the same time, to readdress the strategy of making the garden a place of culture. Without industry and the urban environment which it has shaped, implementation of this promise is, however, scarcely conceivable and, for this reason, the actual task of cultivation still lies ahead. The Industrial Garden Realm is a step on the way towards such a strategy.
 
The worst of what has been left by industrialization in the course of the century has been cleared away or covered up. Yet the consequences of industrialization have a halflife only expressible in generations. This is a fact which cannot be glossed over, but nor is it a reason for assuming an attitude of fatalistic helplessness.
The historical Garden Realm was also born out of crisis. A miniaturized mirror of European cultural history and recent achievements in economic, social and artistic areas came into being as a reaction. "Beautified nature", i.e. designing "the entire land as a garden", reflected the aim of providing a living environment worthy of humans. The means to this end were to design a cultural landscape, arising from the milieu of cultural exchange, imagination and respect for nature and history.
 
The historical Bauhaus was committed to the purpose of paving the way to an age of industrial culture for "new man". With the transition to the age of sustainability, a new challenge for the design of a cultural landscape is emerging.
The task now facing us also includes not forgetting the contradictions of history. In view of global constellations of power, and social and ecological problems, activities are possible in new alliances, new forms of cooperation, acts of intervention and networks. The prerequisite is a learning environment, supported and stimulated by those who are able to combine critical reflection and design in new impulses.
 
The Industrial Garden Realm is a privileged project area: rich in built visions, with a high degree of programmatic density and, at the same time, a symbol of mistakes and delusions, as well as ruthlessness. The new Bauhaus has been able to elaborate and translate these contradictions into projects based on a strategy of cultivation between "industry and garden". Every region needs such an institution - mediating between interest groups in society, with international links, a flexible and strategic as well as imaginative advocate of appropriate cultivation of the environment. These institutions are key centers of an international movement which is beginning to take shape. It knows its reference projects, be they part of the International Building Exhibitions, Europe´s "Regions of the Future" or a diversity of similar initiatives worldwide.
Protagonists are coming to the fore, new networks are emerging in positions of direct conflict with the established institutions, which are often an integral part of the structures of the waning, old industrial age. The Industrial Garden Realm is, owing to its traditions as a European region of culture, as a place of forward-looking experiments and as a new cultural landscape, predestined to stimulate new forms of content and institutions.
Culture means contributing this privileged situation to an international exchange and establishing it to counterbalance a one-sided globalization.