Originally published in San Rocco 6 Collaborations

Coshyop theatre1 See Hannes Meyer ldquoMy dismissal from theBauhausrdquo open letter to Oberbuumlrgermeister HesseDessau 1930 and idem ldquoBauhaus Dessau 1927ndash1930 My Experience of a PolytechnicalEducationrdquo a survey in the Mexican periodicalEdificatioacuten no 3419402 Some of the biggest names include SiemensAEG Daimler Fokker and Opel3 The delicate relationship was also to theindustrial capitalist systemrsquos trouble handlinginflation A balance between labour and productionmodes could not be found and this had alreadybegan to be apparent after 1923 It slowly led to thecrisis and failure of the Weimar Republic with theconsequent seizing of power by the Nazi party SeeSergio Bologna ldquoClass Composition and theTheory of the Party at the Origin of the WorkersndashCouncils Movementrdquo Telos no 13 (Fall 1972) 4shy27 and Antonio Negri Operai e stato Lotteoperaie e riforma dello stato capitalistico trarivoluzione drsquoottobre e New Deal (MilanFeltrinelli 1972)4 From the article ldquoDie neue Weltrdquo that Meyerpublished in 1926 in ABC Beitraumlge zum Bauen[Contributions to Building] an architecturalmagazine founded in 1923 by Hannes Meyer HansSchmidt Mart Stam and the Suprematist ElLissitzky

5 ldquoFor us man portrayed on the stage is significantas a social function It is not his relationship tohimself nor his relationship to God but hisrelationship to society which is central Whenever

Hannes Meyer Coshyop Architecture

Bernardina Borra sdot May 11 2013

Hannes Meyer the second dean of the Bauhaus is remembered as theone that drove the school to ruin Supposedly his strong leftistsympathies had made the school inopportune for the German politicalclimate of the time Those in power disliked him because he openlysympathized with Marxist ideology and the German Social Democracythat had just entered the political scene in the turbulent transition from aWilhelmine Germany to the Weimar Republic But few know that duringthe very short time he was in charge of the Bauhaus ndash from April 1927 toJuly 1930 ndash he turned the school from an elite educational institutioninto a more egalitarian and productive place of learning that was directlyconnected to industry The school had become financially profitable andstudents worked together in brigades that catered to mass industrialmodes of production[1] His goal was to transform the collectivepotential of coshyoperation in architectural production from a politicalconcept into a functional tool as a means of rescuing the working classfrom capitalism Meyer perceived architects as labour and for him coshyoperation was both a collective mode of production and the link betweenthe product itself ndash architecture ndash and its producer ndash mass societyIn those years Germany was still leading in the development of industrialmachinery thanks to strict collaboration between research and labour aswell as an extremely dynamic marketing apparatus[2] A boom in skilledand educated labour had enabled the emerging working class to selfshyorganize through labour unions but also engendered a delicaterelationship with their representative Social Democratic party[3] Rightafter World War I at the end of the German Spartacist revolution theparty took part in the government for the first time in 1919 Thanks toindustry proletarian power was growing and the working class wasgradually becoming conscious of its rights and potential A newdimension of the collective subject ndash backed up by intellectuals ndash wasemerging This was fuelled further by scientific research whichconfirmed the cultural and social movement toward the collectivedimension The scale of the world was starting to decrease faith in theuniqueness of the individual in January 1921 Albert Einstein startledGermany by postulating the possibility of measuring the universeIn Meyerrsquos words ldquoCoshyoperation rules the world The community rulesthe individualrdquo[4] He sincerely believed that coshyoperation was the mostvaluable alternative social structure one founded not on the productionof surplus value but on the collective needs and desires of the masssociety that produced it His thought was strongly characterized by thecollective aspects of producing and learning together He strove tointroduce the working class to the liberating potential of coshyoperationand also used it to problematize collective work in the debate about therole of the architect in the industrial world On the one hand his purposewas to tune the shortcomings of functionalism ndash criticizing the ones whoembraced technological modernization but not the social consequencesof it And on the other hand Meyer used coshyoperation to counterteachingrsquos inability to connect with industrial production and toeliminate the artistic and authorial aspects of artsshyandshycraftsshystyleproductionContemporary to Meyer many others were working on the same themeand the ones who were probably closest in their thinking were BertoltBrecht and Erwin Piscator[5] In 1926 Brechtrsquos collective premieredMann ist Mann (Man Equals Man) a play that stressed collectivity anddownplayed the individual by exploring the human personality assomething that can be dismantled and reassembled like a machine For

he appears his class or social stratum appears withhim His moral spiritual or sexual conflicts areconflicts with societyrdquo Erwin Piscator 1929 ldquoBasicPrinciples of a Sociological Dramardquo in ModernismAn Anthology of Sources and Documents ed VKolocotroni J Goldman and O Taxidou (ChicagoThe University of Chicago Press 1998)

6 See Meyer ldquoDie neue Weltrdquo

7 See Hannes Meyer ldquoHow I Workrdquo ArchitekturaCCCP 6 (1933)

8 K J Winkler Der Architekt Hannes MeyerAnschauungen und Werk (Berlin VEB Verlag fuumlrBauwesen 1989)

Coshyop vitrine

Meyer ndash in the context ferment of German industry ndash the productionmethod should have been closer to social needs in terms of both processand output He believed that the goal of an architect was to organize theinterpenetration of technology and the collective body by way of coshyoperation in order to merge the authorial action of the architect into amore egalitarian and collective process In this way the architect himselfturns into an organizer and becomes a specialist by eliminating theparadoxical separation of the artist from other kinds of workers therebyarticulating architecturersquos melding of art and life The architect has theknowledge to improve the design process and bring together social needsand technology in order to assemble an object made up of use values andvisual codes already consolidated by society Such a process is structuredby continual authorshyfree architectural production In other words withthe organizational support of the architect society produces its ownarchitecture At this point the architectrsquos control is hardly discernable inthe reciprocal interplay of action and potential between society and builtmatter At different moments architecture and the collective bodybecome one anotherrsquos subject or object This suggests a twofoldinterpretation of coshyoperation between architecture and man[6]

The way in which Meyer used coshyoperation as an architectural designtool in the context of the mass society generated by industry can beinterpreted in two ways The first one is explicit and involves the issue ofcoshyoperation among individuals this is the one that is consistentlyapplied by Meyer in his teaching and his practice of his profession[7]The second is more implicit and relates to mass society These twoperspectives can be read as complementary sides of the same tool

In 1924 Meyer designed the Swiss pavilion for the InternationalExhibition of Coshyoperatives in Ghent[8] The space was meant for coshyoperative propaganda through ldquopopular educationrdquo using folks cultureMeyer imposes ldquothe simplest simplicityrdquo in the expression of abstractionto convey the message about coshyoperation In this manner he could at thesame time promote coshyoperation among the individuals comprising masssociety as well as coshyoperate with them through ldquothe education of newvision and perceptionrdquo to stir them to become more politically aware Atone end of the exhibition space was the coshyop vitrine The showcaseconsisted of a large glass box like a shop window offering thirtyshysixstandard items of coshyoperative production and coshyoperative trade Thecollection of coshyop products symbolizes a production that has grown outof the alienation of the capitalist market economy and ownershipdemonstrating how coshyoperation can disenthral man from capitalProducts are arranged in a clear spatial composition and clearly recall theform of repetition of industrial mass production for they are stacked andarranged as if at the end of production assembly lines No product isindividually displayed rather each is presented as part of a group withno centre while nonetheless remaining individually recognizable Peopleentering the pavilion could admire the vitrine at any time of the day Atnight however at the other end of the exhibition space the curtain roseon coshyop theatre

With the ldquocoshyop theatrerdquo Meyer aspired to use short scenes to eliminatehuman emotion by displaying ldquobodyshygames glimpses of light coloursmovement noises and music from a gramophonerdquo The plays were mutepantomimes that described the idea of the coshyoperative to demonstrateits benefits Meyer wrote the scenes himself touching upon the coreelements of the coshyoperative ideology work (private enterprise and wagelabour) clothes (a man finds happiness in the coshyop clothes) dream(about the possibility of different conditions) trade (cutting out themiddleman) The actorsrsquo performance incorporated lifeshysize puppets inorder to suggest the opposition of man versus dummy coshyop versus antishycoshyop By way of this simple pairing the audience was confronted withthe contrast between the real emotions and natural movement of a freedman and a puppet symbolizing a man that does not emancipate himselfby means of coshyoperation With the coshyop theatrical performances Meyerwas precociously experimenting with upcoming developments inexperimental theatre for his four pieces had a clear pedagogical purpose

Lesiure activities had become extremely important In WilhelmineGermany it had grown as the bourgeoisiersquos entertainment while in theWeimar Republic proletarians too started to enjoy theatre plays andmovies An example of this is the success of both theatre and cinemacelebrated by Karl Krauss and Walter Benjamin both intellectuals whoregarded these arts as a form of education And as Eduard Bernstein

9 ldquoA working class that is without political rightsand has grown up in superstition and withinadequate schooling will no doubt revolt fromtime to time and conspire on a small scale but itwill never develop a socialist movement It takes acertain breadth of perspective and a fairlydeveloped consciousness of rights to turn a workerwho occasionally rebels into a socialist That is whypolitical rights and education hold a preeminentplace within every socialist programme of actionrdquoEduard Bernstein Die Voraussetzungen desSozialismus und die Aufgaben derSozialdemokratie [The Preconditions of Socialismand the Tasks of Social Democracy] (StuttgartJHW Dietz Nachfolg 1899) English excerpts arepublished online as ldquoSocialist ldquoRevisionismrdquo TheImmediate Tasks of Social Democracyldquo

10 Bertolt Brecht ldquoThe Modern Theatre is the EpicTheatre Notes to the opera Aufstieg und Fall derStadt Mahagonnyrdquo in Brecht on Theatre TheDevelopment of an Aesthetic ed and trans JohnWillett (London Methuen 1964) Bertolt BrechtldquoThe Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatrerdquo (1930)See also Meg Mumford Bertolt Brecht (Londonand New York Routledge 2009)11 These included his works of Theater CoshyopVitrine Coshyop Lino Coshyop Photo Coshyop InteriorCoshyop12 See Meyer Die neue Welt See also VOPRA (AllshyRussian Society of Proletarian Architects)Statements 10 and 11

Plan of the Bernau school redrawn by the author

said ldquoIt takes a certain breadth of perspective and a fairly developedconsciousness of rights to turn a worker who occasionally rebels into asocialistrdquo[9]

Thus the education of working class was a relevant issue in socialistdebate and theatre became a useful means of exploring it once the worldof theatre had been freed from the bourgeoisie

In 1926 Bertolt Brecht started developing his idea of ldquoepic theatrerdquowhich was designed to provoke rational selfshyanalysis and a critical viewof the play rather than emotional identification Since epic theatre wassupposed to instruct its audience Brecht also called it instructive theatreand in his Lehrstuumlcke (learningshyplays) spectators were no longer in anyway allowed to experience the show uncritically or without anunderstanding of its practical consequences through the overly simplisticmeans of feeling empathy for the characters in a play Brechtrsquos plays wereaimed to affect those engaged in the performance mainly the actorsmost of all but also the spectators In a Marxist way ldquoinstructive theatrerdquowas art for the producer not the consumer The production of theperformance subjected the content and the events portrayed to a processof alienation This was what Brecht called the ldquoSmall Pedagogyrdquo thealienation that is necessary to all understanding or verfremdungseffektWhile the ldquoMajor Pedagogyrdquo made the Lehrstuumlcke turn its audience intoparticipants during the performance process Plays were used asoperative political training By copying the behaviour of the characters inthe play the participants rehearsed how to think and act collectively[10]With Brecht the stage became a means of instruction and this is whatMeyer tried to do with architecture Thanks to the various coshyopprojects[11] of his first experimental phase Meyer already defined coshyoperation as the reciprocity between modes of production and modes ofperception that he will develop in what we might call ldquoepic architecturerdquoIn all his designs he elaborates a new relationship between the buildingits nonshyauthor ndash the architect and other specialists ndash and the collectivesubject For him building is no longer an individual task in whicharchitectural ambition is realized rather ldquoBuilding is a joint undertakingof craftsmen and inventors Building has grown into a collectiveaffair [of individuals]rdquo[12]

Meyer always started a project by drawing a diagram that reflected hisassumption that architecture is part of a system of production reshyproduction and consumption For him this system exerts an influenceover individuals while the collective subject has an influence on thediagram that generates the project This concept of a double relationshippartly anticipates the distracted perception of the detached Parisianflacircneur described by Benjamin The difference is that Meyer aims toachieve a more conscious involvement with a sense of engagementpowered by the collective In fact all of Meyerrsquos designs ndash from thePetersschule to the League of Nations to the Bernau School ndash arededicated to the collective engagement of mass society The taskunderlying these designs is to nurture coshyoperation as a means of bothinfluence and perception Such works best demonstrate how Meyerrsquoswork unpacks both the explicit coshyoperation among individuals withinmass society and the implicit one between mass society and architectureAmong the three mentioned projects the only one that Meyer succeededin completing is the Federal School of the Federation of German TradeUnions in Bernau (1928ndash30) a project he won through a competitionIn this school Meyer could finally flesh out his coshyop ideology The clientsupported Meyerrsquos coshyoperative intentions and the building constructionwas even funded by four and a half million members of the union whoeach contributed fifty pfennings At the time the federation united morethan eighty percent of all the unions in Germany and the school wasthought of as an institute of educational excellence for workers just as theBauhaus was for designers Lessons were intended to allow volunteersfrom the unions to benefit from further education for a short period andthe most common subjects of study were trade unions managementeconomics insurance and labour law and industrial hygiene Meyerworked on this project with a group of students from the Bauhaus Hehad won the competition thanks to a proposal about a new form of socioshyeducational organization designed to stimulate comradeship based on adivision of the 120 students into twelve cells of ten people each[13] Thusthe diagram at the origin of the schoolrsquos design is marked by thedialectics of internal material determinations ndash programme standardshygiene ndash and external socioshyeducational ones It results in a linear

Exterior views of the Bernau school13 Martin Kieren Hannes Meyer Dokumente zurFruumlhzeit Architektur und Gestaltungsversuche1919ndash1927 (Heiden A Niggli 1990)14 Winkler Der Architekt Hannes Meyer

15 See Morris H Hylton III Modernism at RiskModern Solutions for Modern Landmarks anexhibition organized by the World MonumentsFund

16 Karl Marx Economic and PhilosophicalManuscripts Third Manuscript [1844]Oumlkonomischshyphilosophischen ManuskripteTranslated by Martin Milligan (New YorkPrometheus Books 1988)17 ldquoThe multitude is a whole of singularities andcommunication and coshyoperation are fundamentalto its essencerdquo Antonio Negri ldquoPour une definitionontologique de la multituderdquo Multitudes 9 (MayndashJune 2002)18 See Branden W Joseph and Alessia RicciardildquoInterview with Paolo Virnordquo Grey Room no 21(Fall 2005) and Maurizio Lazzarato ldquoImmaterialLabourrdquo19 ldquoMaybe architecture doesnrsquot have to be stupidafter all Liberated from the obligation to constructit can become a way of thinking about anything ndash adiscipline that represents relationshipsproportions connections effects the diagram ofeverythingrdquo Rem Koolhaas ed Content (CologneTaschen 2004)20 Rosa Luxemburgrsquos theory of dialectic ofspontaneity and organization argued that the twoare not separable or separate activities but ratherdifferent moments in the same political processone cannot exist without the other See RosaLuxemburg The Rosa Luxemburg Reader edPeter Hudis and Kevin B Anderson (New YorkMonthly Review Press 2004)

arrangement organizing the various uses of the complex into threedistinct yet interconnected components The first building hosts most ofthe public functions and is connected to a residential zone of fourdormitories It terminates with a twoshystorey building with a widestaircase connecting a gymnasium and classrooms A long steelshyandshyglass corridor slopes down following the landscape and serving as aninterior passage linking the complexrsquos components and ends at the widestaircase The steel used in the construction of this passage as well as inthe winter garden and the gymnasium staircase is painted redcontrasting sharply with the gray concrete structure and buff brick of theexterior[14] The vibrant red signalled the principal circulation path butalso an informal space in which to meet It is one of the buildingrsquos mostprominent public spaces and external features and it emphasizes theunderlying functional diagram In this project the collective spacesembody a significant mass psychological factor that attains the soughtshyafter dimension of collective life shared production and selfshyvalorizationfor the Federationrsquos students

Unfortunately the ideal context for coshyoperation created at the BernauSchool was soon interrupted by the war The Nazi party confiscated theinstitute only three years after it had opened and converted it into an SStraining facility After the war the East German Trade Union Federationreused it again as a training facility but later on the buildings were leftvacant and eventually abandoned Following the reunification ofGermany that began in 1989 the building was found in very bad shapeand a restoration effort sponsored by the regional government ofBrandenburg in partnership with a new occupant theHandwerkskammer (Chamber of Crafts) Berlin began in 2001[15]

Analyzing how Meyer focused on establishing a relationship with thecontemporary collective subject of his day ndash mass society ndash can provideinsights into how to relate the collective subject of today the multitudeIn his coshyop works Meyer deconstructed architecture in terms of itsmaterial determinants and the social conditions of its making For himarchitecture had to be produced within society and disassociated fromcapital It could be argued that Meyer tried to find the link between theproduction of architecture and Karl Marxrsquos concept of the production ofman and society ldquoJust as society itself produces man as man so issociety produced by himrdquo[16] Like mass society the multitude is asubject of production but its coshyoperative power is exploited by capital[17] In general coshyoperation is an autonomous power typical of collectivesubjects and is a mode of production that has to be reclaimed from theclaws of capitalism

The crucial aspect of the architecture of the collective subject is thatMeyer had already used material diagrammes to ldquoorganizerdquo the potentialof collective immaterial production[18] and the selfshyvalorization of masssociety something that was largely underestimated at the time Thanksto Meyerrsquos stress on coshyoperation architecture was not produced by adiagram mapping only material factors Rather his application of bothmaterial and immaterial factors in the development of diagrams is theopposite of todayrsquos tendency to create a ldquodiagram of everythingrdquo[19]Opposing this coshyop architecture is the organization of a nonshybureaucratic process that both produces effects upon and is generated bythe collective subject in ways that would not be possible without a designIn other words coshyoperative architecture entails reorganizing anorganized form of existence It alternates phases of organization and ofspontaneity[20] by letting the collective subject implicitly coshyoperatewith architecture and foster explicit coshyoperation among its individuals

Bibliography

Eduard Bernstein Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und dieAufgaben der Sozialdemokratie [The Preconditions ofSocialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy] (StuttgartJHW Dietz Nachfolg 1899)

Sergio Bologna ldquoClass Composition and the Theory of the Party atthe Origin of the WorkersndashCouncils Movementrdquo Telos no 13(Fall 1972) 4shy27

Bertolt Brecht ldquoThe Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatrerdquo (1930)Bertolt Brecht ldquoThe Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre Notes to

the opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonnyrdquo in Brechton Theatre The Development of an Aesthetic ed and transJohn Willett (London Methuen 1964)

Branden W Joseph and Alessia Ricciardi ldquoInterview with PaoloVirnordquo Grey Room no 21 (Fall 2005)

Martin Kieren Hannes Meyer Dokumente zur Fruumlhzeit Architekturund Gestaltungsversuche 1919ndash1927 (Heiden A Niggli1990)

Rem Koolhaas ed Content (Cologne Taschen 2004)Rosa Luxemburg The Rosa Luxemburg Reader ed Peter Hudis

and Kevin B Anderson (New York Monthly Review Press2004)

Karl Marx Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts ThirdManuscript [1844] OumlkonomischshyphilosophischenManuskripte Translated by Martin Milligan (New YorkPrometheus Books 1988)

Hannes Meyer ldquoDie Neue Weltrdquo ABC Beitraumlge zum Bauen (1926)Hannes Meyer ldquoBauhaus Dessau 1927ndash1930 My Experience of a

Polytechnical Educationrdquo Edificatioacuten no 34 (1940)Hannes Meyer ldquoMy dismissal from the Bauhausrdquo open letter to

Oberbuumlrgermeister Hesse Dessau 1930Hannes Meyer ldquoHow I Workrdquo Architektura CCCP 6 (1933)Meg Mumford Bertolt Brecht (London and New York Routledge

2009)Antonio Negri Operai e stato Lotte operaie e riforma dello stato

capitalistico tra rivoluzione drsquoottobre e New Deal (MilanFeltrinelli 1972)

Antonio Negri ldquoPour une definition ontologique de la multituderdquoMultitudes 9 (MayndashJune 2002)

Erwin Piscator 1929 ldquoBasic Principles of a Sociological Dramardquo inModernism An Anthology of Sources and Documents ed VKolocotroni J Goldman and O Taxidou (Chicago TheUniversity of Chicago Press 1998)

K J Winkler Der Architekt Hannes Meyer Anschauungen undWerk (Berlin VEB Verlag fuumlr Bauwesen 1989)