It Takes Work to Get the Modern Lawn

The Bauhaus campus in Dessau is a site celebrated by UNESCO as “a reminder of the still uncompleted project for ‘modernity with a human face.’”¹ 1 - UNESCO website, accessed January 9, 2016, http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/729.This official narrative is embedded throughout the site — in the iconic dormitory balconies, the exposed light fittings, and the glass curtain wall that covers the workshop spaces. As research residents invited to develop a project, we used the same site-specific tactic to articulate an additional message, one that subverts the celebration of “modernity with a human face” to reveal a condition that recognizes and encompasses the role of the living and of the terrain for its very existence.