Simon Mitchell

• Mitchell, Simon (2025). Storage. In Fleckner, Uwe & Lending, Mari (Ed.), Provenance in Architecture. A Dictionary. Hatje Cantz Verlag. ISSN 9783775761147. p. 190–192. Full text in Research Archive
• Mitchell, Simon (2025). Partial Provenances: Staging Minor Matters Inside a Reuse Warehouse. Future Anterior. ISSN 1549-9715. 22(1-2), p. 158–179. doi: 10.1353/fta.2025.a982235. Full text in Research Archive
• Lending, Mari; Mitchell, Simon & Rieger, Alena Beth (2025). Introduction: The Potential of Provenance. Future Anterior. ISSN 1549-9715. 22(1-2), p. iii–viii. doi: 10.1353/fta.2025.a982224. Full text in Research Archive

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• Mitchell, Simon (2026). A Tale of Four or Five Junkers Radiators (and some other minor building objects). Full text in Research Archive
• Mitchell, Simon (2026). Re-Storing Bauhaus Architecture: Building Materialities and their Archival Lives. Full text in Research Archive
• Mitchell, Simon (2026). Minor Histories from Minor Parts: Revaluing the Ordinary in the Bauhaus Building Research Archive. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Much has been written about Bauhaus architecture. Its major history, buildings, and leading figures are known across the world. A lot less, however, has been written about the building research archive in Dessau, an archive of Bauhaus related building materials and components, be they rusted radiators or obscure chunks of concrete. Since the archive’s founding around the turn of this century it has accumulated and inventoried thousands of architectural elements as part of the Bauhaus’s ongoing conservation work. When heritage institutions such as Unesco frame and monumentalise the value of Bauhaus architecture, they often do so by drawing on its canonised history. Charters claim that the Bauhaus embodies the spirit of Modernism, that its buildings stand as authentic testimonies, and that its value is universal and outstanding. In other words, Bauhaus value is often considered inherent. Yet by following the work of the building research archive, a different story of value emerges. For over twenty years, the archive has preserved Bauhaus buildings by identifying, collecting, transporting, and cataloguing their material residues. These are objects sometimes sourced from private residences in the Törten Settlement, or from ordinary local buildings constructed around the same time and using near identical components. Through ethnographic observations, this lecture follows the work of the archive in 2019, tracing building components from their sites of acquisition into storage, digital databasing, and an exhibition. It shows that the value of Bauhaus materiality is not inherent but contingent; produced through everyday and practical archival negotiations. What emerges is a minor history of Bauhaus architecture told through the circulation and conservation of some minor parts. Starting from the archive space, I ask what alternative connections emerge when we follow the movements of specific building materials, and I consider the broader role that storages play in imbuing otherwise unwanted building materials with renewed potential.

• Mitchell, Simon (2025). Projections and Circulations: Across Documents, Projects, and Heritage. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  How do projects organise our lives, how do documents ground our politics, and what can the preservation of sail cargo boats teach us about ways of working in heritage in the context of climate emergency? This seminar series engages three distinct topics but, taken together, they inform how we think about provenance, circulation, and the projection of pasts into futures. Andrew Graan traces the contested genealogy of the “project form,” from early modern England to its naturalization today. Faye Thorley, of Raybel Charters, explores maritime heritage and how restored artifacts from the past are mobilised as resources for building community and creating new trade relations. Kristin Asdal presents practice-oriented document analysis, examining how documents act as “things” that ground democratic life. Together these three talks invite us to consider how projects, heritage objects, and documents are composed and circulate. But they further invite us to reflect on how we inherit the past and imagine the future.

• Mitchell, Simon (2025). Reading Fleckner's "Marketing the Defamed: On the Contradictory Use of Provenances in the Third Reich. Full text in Research Archive
• Mitchell, Simon (2025). Reading Appadurai's “Introduction: Commodities and the politics of value” (1986). Full text in Research Archive
• Mitchell, Simon (2025). Where Materials Precede Design: Upcycling and the Question of Agency in Architecture. Full text in Research Archive
• Mitchell, Simon (2025). Storage at Scale. Full text in Research Archive
• Mitchell, Simon (2025). Storing the Future. Full text in Research Archive
• Mitchell, Simon (2024). On the Concept Oligopticon. Full text in Research Archive
• Mitchell, Simon (2024). Warehouses of Architectural Components. Full text in Research Archive
• Mitchell, Simon (2024). Archiving Bauhaus Fragments: Across Architectural Conservation and Practices of Valuation. Full text in Research Archive
• Mitchell, Simon (2024). Bauhaus Heritage: Logics of Valuation through Collecting, Archiving, and Exhibiting. Full text in Research Archive

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