The New Bauhaus: Course Curriculum

After he was appointed director of The New Bauhaus, Moholy had just four months to open the school. He did not attempt to reinvent the Bauhaus wheel, nor did he drastically deviate from the original school’s core competencies. Moholy appropriated Gropius’s concentric ring-based curriculum, and a “preliminary” course in Gropius’s model (Vórkurs in German) would later become the “foundation” course in Moholy’s version. Moholy used the course to encourage emotional expressiveness and technical experimentation as part of his broader goal of guiding students to artful, imaginative design. The Foundation sequence has remained a fixture throughout ID’s 85 years and exists today as an entry program — a way to welcome and encourage non-designers to obtain a graduate degree in design. For those who do not have a formal design background, this one-semester sequence of courses covers essential design theories and techniques. Foundation students have gone on to become some of the school’s most successful graduates.