The Advanced School of Collective Feeling: Inhabiting Modern Physical Culture 1926-38

In 1928 Swiss architect Hannes Meyer (1889-1954) succeeded Walter Gropius as director of the Bauhaus in Dessau, where he had stared teaching at the Architecture Department the previous year. Yet allegations of communist activity in the volatile political climate of the Weimar Republic lead to Meyer’s dismissal in 1930. During his tenure at Bauhaus Meyer proposed the concept of the ‘Advanced School of Collective Feeling’. It was based on his belief that the gymnasium was overtaking the museum as the great public space.American architects and designers Matthew Kennedy and Nile Greenberg have undertaken a reconstruction of Meyer’s 1928 concept by building models, redrawing plans and examining types of activity that took place in the context of this experiment which had been little discussed at the time. Kennedy and Greenberg believe that this series of houses, apartments and exhibitions, merging physical culture with the home, left an indelieble mark on the modern, domestic aesthetic as we know it. Their new book brings to light again Meyer’s nearly forgotten concept and features the contemporary reconstruction of the ‘Advanced School of Collective Feeling’ though texts and illustrations.