The cutting-edge academic group which founded the Bauhaus School in Germany could see its own reflection in the curriculum for the Barcelona School of Architecture during the thirties.  This is the conclusion reached in a research project entitled “París-Frankfurt, un cuaderno de notas de Torres Clavé y una propuesta pedagógica para Barcelona” which UIC Barcelona School of Architecture lecturer Guillem Carabí presented on 10 October, at the II Society of Architectural Historians and Urbanism (AhAU) International Conference, held in Madrid under the theme of “Bauhaus In and Out: Perspectives from Spain”. 

As part of his research, Guillem Carabí analysed the draft versions of speeches given by GATCPAC architect, Josep Torres Clavé, during his trip to Frankfurt in 1929 to attend the II CIAM conference (International Conference on Modern Architecture).  The study also looks in-depth into the Curriculum at the Barcelona School of Architecture in 1937, as designed by the architect. The Curriculum is then compared with teaching programmes in the Walter Gropius School.   

“Certainly almost all architects who were fighting to bring architecture into its natural medium were taking a sneaky look at what the Bauhaus school and its teachers were doing. Its natural medium was of course the technical, social and economic aspects which at that time were kept apart from architecture” said the UIC Barcelona lecturer.  This research project, which is still ongoing, underlines the role that was given to ornamentation in the Torres Clavé Curriculum, “a concept that had been completely passed over by the orthodoxy of the modern movement but which, at the Bauhaus, was seen as a field of activity in which to undertake projects in the area of both industry and crafts” added Guillem Carabí. 

The AhAU is a scientific society that brings together academics from the fields of Architecture and Urbanism and which aims to incentivize both research and an exchange between researchers and academic institutions. UIC Barcelona lecturers Guillem Carabí and Paolo Sustersic are members of the society, which is led by prestigious full professor of Architectural History and Urbanism, Carlos Sambricio.