The Bauhaus of the 21st century?

Last week, I went to the exhibition Moderne am Main 1919 - 1933 at the Museum of Applied Art, here in Frankfurt. This is timed with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus in Weimar, and showed the influence of Bauhaus design in the Frankfurt region.

The Bauhaus sought to unify art, craft and technology in all-embracing design for a new human being, a new way of living, "adapted to a world of machines, radios and fast cars." (Walter Gropius)

The exhibition was fascinating, and what became abundantly clear as I made my way around was that, in the words of the Museum "... if the Bauhaus was modernism's academy, Neues Frankfurt was its workshop."

If the photos above remind you just a little of IKEA, then you are not alone. There's currently another exhibition running, this time at London's Design Museum entitled Home Futures: Living in Yesterday's Tomorrow which takes again, the theme beloved of the Bauhaus - the merging of architecture, technology and everyday life - over the last 100 years. And the collaboration partner in this case is none other than IKEA.

I haven't been to this one, and probably won't get a chance, but would love to see the installations which examine the concept of home, for example, Uninvited Guests "... a series of connected smart devices tracking diet, health and sleep and intrusively offering advice on self-improvement." Yikes.

The Bauhaus movement arose in a time of change as electricity was becoming commonplace in everyday homes as well as cities, an industrial age, but also an age of increased connection via radio and telephone. IKEA conquered the world as the information age was born, with its democratisation of design.

With the digital age and its promise (or threat) of artificial intelligence, augmented/virtual reality, 3-D printing, cybercurrency, autonomous vehicles and all the rest upon us, I wonder who or what will be illuminating us on how to live? Who will be the real architects of the Smart Cities? Bauhaus was a design movement, IKEA is a retail brand. It's likely that the new Bauhaus will be a platform of some sort - social media, mobility, healthcare, retail, technology - who knows?

But will there be human beings behind (or in front of) the platform?