Abstract

Might design education be, at its heart, a form of occupational therapy? This is the question that this article grapples with, taking László Moholy-Nagy’s repurposing of the Bauhaus pedagogy for use with disabled veterans as its starting point. In exploring his work at the School of Design in Chicago (as well as an uncharacteristically activist period at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which instituted a Veterans Art Center), this article seeks out the shared foundations of rehabilitory thought and the underpinnings of the Bauhaus Vorkurs by taking stock of Moholy-Nagy’s long-standing engagement with the field of psychotechnics.