When I was finishing high school I was destined to continue my academic life studying Architecture. I took special art classes to get prepared to study one of the fine arts I always loved, and so I did, I entered the architectural school at my hometown in the Canary Islands.
All students in their first year must learn about the
Bauhaus school and their impact. I knew about them but in that year I learned about their philosophy in detail, and I became sanely obsessed with their work. Inside it's difficult social/political time Bauhaus revolutionized the world of architecture, design, and art. Their modernist designs were centered in functionality, simplicity, rationality, and taking art to everybody through mass production. In summary, making our day to day habitats and tools... better, cheaper, simpler and available to all.
So through most of my first year I asked myself "Where is the present-day Bauhaus?" I was certain to find the contemporary equivalent and join in, my personal drive being "the goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will". After spending months searching I couldn't find any new history-changing movement in architecture or art in general. One day in my second year, I discovered
Free Software and its depth through a friend. Being a computer enthusiast I knew the term but not the philosophy behind it, and once I understood them it just clicked - I found it. The next year of my academic life I started studying Computer Engineering, and the rest... well, just fell into place.
Few times every century a social changing movement arises, right now Free Software is defining our freedom, rights, and how we live in a world rapidly switching from analog to digital. Free Software is the contemporary Bauhaus. I feel very proud and lucky to be a small part of it.
