A Design Sets the Standard

Sobre este lugar

On Peterskirchplatz in Basel stands a light blue school building that architect Hans Mähly built in 1928/29. It could have turned out differently. In the running was a competition entry that was to make architectural history: the design for Petersschule by architects Hannes Meyer (1889–1954) and Hans Wittwer (1894–1952). Hannes Meyer built the trailblazing Freidorf cooperative estate in Muttenz from 1919 to 1924 and was appointed director of the Bauhaus Dessau in 1928 as Walter Gropius’s successor. Dismissed there for political reasons, he emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1930. The revised Petersschule design was one of the boldest concepts in the new school building of the 1920s. The unusual form of the school building, a steel-and-concrete skeleton system, and its internal organisation conveyed the dawning new era through architectural means. The architects sought a design solution that would serve the educational ideal of a young generation broadly educated in every respect. The exhibition shows the life and work of Hannes Meyer: from his childhood and youth in Basel through his study trips, his time in Dessau, in the Soviet Union and in Mexico, to his last years, which he spent in Ticino. The centrepiece of the exhibition is the model of Petersschule Basel; it was built for the exhibition to mark his hundredth birthday, «Hannes Meyer - 1898-1954 - architekt urbanist lehrer». Exhibition team Curator: Ernst Spycher Exhibition graphics: stutz grafik + design The exhibition was supported by: swisslos-Fonds Basel-Stadt Ernst Göhner Stiftung Schweizerischer Ingenieur- und Architektenverein Sektion Basel Bund Schweizer Architektinnen und Architekten Hans und Renée Müller-Meylan Stiftung Basel As well as anonymous foundations and private companies.