18 Students from 11 Turkish Universities Participated in the “Bauhaus Open Studios” Program, Coordinated by Our Academics

The Bauhaus Open Studios programme, launched last September under the coordination of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Koray Gelmez, Asst. Prof. Dr. Pelin Efilti, and Res. Asst. Ali Cankat Alan from the Department of Industrial Design at Istanbul Technical University (ITU), and in collaboration with Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, has been successfully completed.

As part of the programme, 18 industrial design students from 11 universities across Türkiye came together around the theme “The Design Student’s Bag” and engaged in a multilayered open studio process focused on research, idea development, making, and sharing. The process enabled students to rethink the experience of being a design student through everyday life, studio culture, tools and materials, spatial conditions, and individual needs. The hybrid structure of the programme was supported by online meetings, assignments, process sharing, and prototyping stages.

Throughout the online phase of the programme, students gradually developed their own design approaches through material and tactile explorations, user interviews, motto and collage development, process sharing, and prototype experiments. In this respect, the programme offered more than a workshop focused solely on final outcomes; it presented a model grounded in research, reflection, and peer learning. In particular, the use of social media and digital communication tools for sharing the design process fostered an ongoing environment of interaction and learning among students from different universities.

The programme concluded with a visit to Bauhaus Dessau on 13–16 April 2026. During this visit, students had the opportunity to present their projects within the Bauhaus context and to experience firsthand the building’s historical and pedagogical legacy. Participants also stayed in Prellerhaus, the studio wing of the Bauhaus building, during their visit. According to Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau’s official description, Prellerhaus, completed in 1926, historically consisted of 28 studio rooms where Bauhaus students and young masters lived and worked, and today it still offers visitors the opportunity to stay within this historic setting. This made it possible for students to experience Bauhaus not only as a museum or historical reference, but as a lived educational environment.

Bringing together students from different institutions on a shared ground of design and learning, this international collaboration marked an important step in strengthening the ITU Department of Industrial Design’s engagement with research-based, open, and experimental pedagogical approaches in design education. Katja Klaus and Philipp Sack from the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau team also made significant contributions to the programme through their academic support, hospitality, and valuable involvement throughout the process.

Bauhaus and Open Studios

Founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus is regarded as one of the most important reference points in modern design education for bringing together art, craft, and design within an integrated educational model. Bauhaus pedagogy was shaped by principles such as workshop-based learning, thinking through materials, experimental production, interdisciplinarity, and the integration of theory and practice. The Dessau period, in particular, stands out as the phase in which this pedagogical model was institutionalized most visibly and effectively across architecture, objects, interiors, textiles, and visual communication. Many of the core practices of design education today — including studio culture, learning by doing, process-oriented thinking, and prototyping — are directly or indirectly related to the Bauhaus legacy.

In its official introduction, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau also describes the Bauhaus as one of the most important institutions in artistic and design education up to the present day. Through the Open Studios – Teaching Models programme, the Foundation aims to reconnect this educational legacy with current debates in design and creative education. The programme’s main approach is to rethink the logic of the historical Bauhaus preliminary course and workshop model in relation to contemporary questions in design education, and to translate historical teaching models centred on material, knowledge, and the human being into contemporary practices.

The programme has also been carried out over the years with various international universities and design schools under different themes. In this context, Open Studio examples have included collaborations with Cornell College of Human Ecology Department of Human Centered Design, Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of the Arts in Belgrade, Kuwasawa Design Institute in Tokyo, Intermedia Communication Studio of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and Virginia Tech (USA). This demonstrates how Bauhaus Open Studios has evolved into an international learning platform that brings together schools and pedagogical approaches from different countries in Dessau.

For more details about the programme: https://bauhaus-dessau.de/en/knowledge/teaching/

“The Design Student’s Bag” workshop led by academics from the ITU Department of Industrial Design represents a contemporary part of this international network and offers an original example of connecting students from Türkiye with Bauhaus pedagogy. In this sense, the project should be understood not only as a workshop outcome, but also as a research-oriented educational experiment contributing to current discussions in design education around open studios, hybrid learning, process transparency, and inter-institutional collaboration.