426 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy
Space, Form and Colour, Light and Dark as the necessary basic knowledge required
for a successful completion of the rest of the course.^2 Wassily Kandinsky in particular
envisaged the ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk, not only as the product of the artist or
architect, but also as a pedagogical principle. In his eyes, the various courses of the
study formed an indivisible ideal unity.
The rise of the Nazis curtailed the life of the Bauhaus University. After its founda-
tion in Weimar by Henry van de Velde in 1917, it fled to Dessau in 1925 under Walter
Gropius, and was closed down in Berlin in 1933 by Ludwig Mies before his exile to
the United States.
The influence on German art and architecture teaching after the Second World War
was great, because many former Bauhaus students took up positions in universities
and academies, where they reintroduced many of the Bauhaus principles.
However, this was never a glorious comeback. Apart from Max Bill’s Hochschul-
gründung in Ulm, most of what the rest had to offer was a feeble and diluted version
of the complex and coherent Bauhaus pedagogy. This was because the total concept
was never reintroduced completely. Instead, parts of an indivisible whole were reduced
to a few isolated exercises.^3
The distinction between visual phenomena that was made in the Bauhaus tradition
was later followed in the Netherlands by the architecture critic J.J. Vriend in his book
Architectuur als samenspel van ruimte en vorm [Architecture as interaction between
space and form], in which he describes the elements that are decisive for every form
of architecture, irrespective of trend or style: ‘forms; function; function and ground
plan; affect and reason; square and circle; cube and sphere; symmetry and asymmetry;
rhythm; sculptural building forms; fantasy and reality; light and shadow; inside and
outside; the space between the things; play and material; construction and form’.
The book promises ‘to teach comprehension of what is alive in architecture today,
as well as in that of yesterday and tomorrow’.^4
If the study of form in architecture can follow such a simple and clear scheme,
why is this scheme no longer to be found in a single architectural course in the
Netherlands?
Starting in the 1970s, an important shift has taken place from the (systematic) study
of form by the students to the ‘freeing’ of the students from general ideals of form in
order to allow them to develop their own creativity to the full. This is all based on
the supposed uniqueness of every (would-be) designer. With the focus that emerged
in the 1990s on the “concept”, this is the course that the teaching of Morphology
has followed. It is not only the content of Morphology that changed as a result;
the form of Morphology also changed very clearly at the Academy of Architecture
Amsterdam. Although the scale level and choice of subject in Morphology teaching
often differ from the design projects, many Morphology assignments looked like mini
design projects,^5 which were often evaluated exclusively in terms of their conceptual
power. Consequently, the opportunity has been lost to use Morphology to develop
specific visual skills on the part of the students.
The notion of Morphology is not confined to courses in architecture and art. It is also
to be found in primary education in the Netherlands. In 1857 it was laid down by