Following the route around this exhibition of the modernist design school I passed some Bauhaus furniture and overheard a eight or nine year old say the immortal line to his parents 'it's just like IKEA'. His well-spoken and obviously proud Father explained why this may be so and congratulated him on a good observation. I know what the boy meant and I think that's why this exhibition didn't grab me in the way some previous Bauhaus related exhibitions have such as the Albers/Moholy-Nagy and Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde at Tate Modern. The Bauhaus is now another part of our modern, consumerist world with the obligatory shop with buying opportunities.
Afterwards I treated myself to a coffee from Costa, the hugely profitable coffee wing of Whitbread which has a concession at the Barbican (£2.15 for a small latte although you mustn't actally call it 'sml' of course). Sitting outside in the sun the Barbican is undeniably beautiful, the flats with flowers drapped over their balconies look like a modern day Hanging Gardens of Babylon, modernist social housing from the sixties/seventies that actually work. Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, would've been proud although unfortunately, because of its success the Barbican is now out of the reach of anyone on an ordinary wage of course.
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