Insights from bauhaus innovation for education and workplaces in a post-pandemic world

Abstract

This paper examines Bauhaus School (1919–1933) innovation and relevance today. The School is a landmark in the history of design as a discipline and the development of design education. The School was also a workplace, commercialising Bauhaus-designed products. While drawing global interest in its innovations, the School faced resistance in Germany because it challenged conventions. This problem raises the questions: How did the School-workplace generate innovations amid the calamity of post-war Germany, and what is the significance of the Bauhaus for post-pandemic education and workplaces one hundred years on? The concept of ‘transgression’ is used to understand innovation at the Bauhaus School-workplace. Haraway discusses transgressive practices that disrupt established knowledges, moving ways of thinking and doing in new directions. Analysis of workplace learning research reveals that three interfacing dimensions make up innovation: (1) workplace environments, (2) the culture-order that facilitates innovation, and (3) learning in practice in authentic settings. This qualitative case study reports on how Bauhaus innovation emerged at the intersection of these key dimensions. There are surprising commonalities between the Bauhaus approach to innovation in challenging times and contemporary thinking about supporting innovation which are relevant to education, particularly STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) education, and workplaces in a world affected by the COVID 19 pandemic. Thus, encouraging people who challenge boundaries, rules or ‘the way things are’ can support innovation. This paper addresses a gap in workplace learning research on interrelated dimensions of innovation which the Bauhaus recognized. The study also offers an innovative approach to the examination of innovation across time and space whereas most contemporary studies of innovation focus on the present. Further, conceptualizing innovation as transgression offers a new way of thinking about innovation in design and in the workplace.