Konrad Wachsmann's universal connector is a metal connecting node used in the construction of prefabricated houses, devised under the shadow cast by the Second World War. It was first used in 1949, in the General Panel System designed by Wachsmann and Walter Gropius. For Wachsmann, the connector combined his interest in the rationalization and standardization of architecture with concepts of universal applicability. Like almost no other, Wachsmann advanced the industrialization of architecture and the possibilities associated with it to arrive at a turning point in architecture.
For the exhibition, eight designers, curators and scientists have conducted research into Wachsmann's universal connector as the cornerstone of an industrialized building system. In doing so, they investigated the historic context and transatlantic discourses of postwar modernism that are bundled in the metallic connector. By searching archives and traveling to Berlin, Ulm, Boston and Chicago, they tracked down Wachsmann's fields of endeavor. They now present their findings in the exhibition The Art of Joining. Designing the Universal Connector in the Bauhaus Building in Dessau.
9 August – 31 December 2018
