The Bauhaus Radical festival took place at the Open Stage of the Dessau Bauhaus Museum and the Walter Gropius’ Employment Office. During three intense days hundred intentionally selected students and ten architects were exploring radicalness and architecture while asking themselves if is still possible to create bases for new architectures that are capable of creating a worldwide impact like Bauhaus buildings did?

We talked with one of participants, a filmaker Rebeka Bratož Gornik. Who's Rebeka?

Who is Frida Escobedo? I had the opportunity to be part of her team during the festival. She is the youngest architect who exhibited in Serpentine Pavilion in London. Creating ideas together with other international colleagues was an amazing experience for me.

Why Radical? At first it was pretty obvious that the title reveals the immense inventions of modernist age, but seriously why radical? The term has a really strong connotation at first. It means (especially of change or action) relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something; far-reaching or thorough. Of course many thoughts were constantly popping up in my head during this festival like are we going to change something really radically at this festival? How? Is it possible to do that in only 3 days? The purpose of the festival was not about changing the world in these three days, but to discredit the discourse regarding knowledge and ideas of the past, the present and the future.

What about the funeral of Bauhaus school? Calm down, Bauhaus school is still at Dessau. I’m talking here about the performance, where a plastic marriage was performed as an irony to the today’s consumption of the plastic. And experiencing a dance of architectural cyborgs was quite impressive.

Anyway it was fun attending the workshop even more fun working at radical ideas and most of all, knowing all these people from all around the world.

So what! What now? Borrowing words from Bruno Fiorietti’s introduction speech, “if you want to be radical, you have to return to the past, not to make the same mistakes. Without the past you can not reach the light«. This is a great starting point not only for architects who build and create space, but also for all human beings to live more harmoniously in this world we share.

Radical is not about acting radical, with the intent to be radical. Radical is when actions and activities have the impact to the real world, spontaneously and strongly, and they can be followed by another unrestrained. 

Festival Architecture Radical, Dessau, 31 May – 2 June 2019, Organized by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, Reporting from the front: Rebeka Bratož Gornik, Photos: ©Tomas Meyer - Ostkreuz and Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau