New European Bauhaus for reflection: modernism against COVID-19 pandemic, or only?

Abstract

The article outlines – using the Literature Analysis Tool – the socio-residentialsettlement references of historical Bauhaus thoughts and practices leading to the emerging message of the New European Bauhaus (NEB). NEB introduces – like the work of Walter Gropius – a climate of hope. The current reflections indicate that without a real bolder departure from the capitalist paradigm of the market economic growth, NEB will remain – like the historical Bauhaus – an ambitious, in a good sense of the word utopian, proposition of a holistic, humanistic civilization based on social management. In order to prevent this from happening with the NEB, one cannot abandon the attempts to repair the entire sphere of settlement and living space, i.e., repairing the world. Therefore, it is necessary to promote through NEB, also existent in interwar Poland, the cultural and technological values of architecture and urban planning extended to the concepts of housing, settlement and dwelling beyond cities and urbanized areas not only in the EU and Europe. Only then will there be opportunities for the implementation of a holistic, long-term fix of the daily living of inclusive communities and societies. We do not know much about NEB, which additionally provides us with an opportunity to outline its roots, expectations, opportunities and threats related to it.