The White Cube
Module 1

School // Workshop // Age 12–14 // 2 hours // 3 lessons
Making // building // paper
Preliminary course // theory of form // community // reduction // material // balance
can be combined with Module 4

Silke Wittig | CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

YOU WILL NEED:

A4 paper
printed cut-out sheet
scissors
glue sticks
Option: coloured paper, coloured pencils
Variant mobilé: wooden rods, nylon thread

INSTRUCTIONS

The printed cut-out sheets serve as templates for making cubes, cuboids and pyramids out of ordinary A4 paper. Participants learn about basic geometrical forms as they make their own “building blocks” out of the simple material of paper. Once the building blocks have been made, small groups can work together to create shapes, sculptures and architectural models.

Printed cut-out sheets

From the outset the Bauhaus propagated a reduced, unornamented style of design orientated on basic geometric forms. While each teacher pursued their own concept, priority was always given to function, production, suitability, and visibility of construction. These aspects apply at all scales, from large architectural ensembles through individual buildings, to functional furniture, user-friendly utensils and unremarkable everyday objects. The buildings designed by Georg Muche, Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe resemble cubes.
When he founded the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius was seeking to bring together the arts and crafts. The goal was to train a new type of artist in the field of design and architecture to create products suitable for industrial mass production.

Training at the Bauhaus began with a single-semester preliminary course, using new and experimental educational methods to impart knowledge of materials and basic design principles. The students developed spatial structures, concentrating on materials, construction, function and production. The aim was to optimise production and minimise use of materials, energy and time.

The Swiss painter and art teacher Johannes Itten designed the preliminary course at the Bauhaus in Weimar. Itten saw individual sensibility, subjective recognition and objective comprehension as the basis of creative design. His teaching as head of the preliminary course (1919–23) concentrated on studies of nature and materials, along with colour and form theory; analyses of the Old Masters and life drawing were also included. When Itten left the Bauhaus in 1923, László Moholy-Nagy took over the preliminary course, which he ran jointly with Josef Albers. Moholy-Nagy shifted the focus from artistic to technical questions, but retained Itten’s teaching methods, encouraging students to conduct their own material studies. Rather than promoting pure individuality, he sought to systematically introduce his students – in a synthesis of the senses – to basic technical principles such as statics, dynamics and equilibrium. In 1928 Josef Albers became official head of the preliminary course. He encouraged students to investigate the properties of materials like metal, wood and paper using simple tools, and also placed special weight on the effect and representation of light, shade and perspective.

Module 1 takes up the idea of investigating a material, as they did in the preliminary course. Students explore the properties of paper, studying its characteristics and constructive possibilities. The basic geometric forms are also introduced.