A microhistory of architecture historical imagination and the Bauhaus

In this paper, we develop the notion of historical imagination as a methodological practice in microhistory. The relevance of microhistory for organization research goes beyond the focus on the small scale, as its methods involve tracing the sources that allow us to reconstruct lived experience. We use the Bauhaus School as a case study to illustrate how microhistorical methods and historical imagination can reconstruct the perception and impact of a novel design aesthetic in their historical context. Here we draw on ego-documents as key to historical imagination and define a related type of source, alter-documents, that report on how others are experienced by the self. By bringing historical imagination to microhistory, we introduce methodological rigor and reflexivity to the approach. Our study also contributes to a better understanding of the methodological practice of narrative construction through historical imagination and demonstrates its usefulness for understanding the aesthetic experience of architecture and space in the past.