BAUHAUS

Both pragmatic and idealistic, the school sought contracts with industry in
order to become more self-supporting, but also to fulfil the basic principal
that beautifully designed objects would bring about a better world.
Karen Koehler
The Bauhaus (191933) is widely considered as the most important school
of art and design of the 20th century. Founded by the German architect
Walter Gropius in the provincial town of Weimar also the centre of the
new republican government the Bauhaus quickly established its
reputation as the leading and most progressive centre of the international
avant-garde. Gropius sought to do away with traditional distinctions
between the fine arts and craft, and to forge an entirely new kind of
creative designer, skilled in both the conceptual aesthetics of art and the
technical skills of handcrafts. Students were assigned to a workshop in
metals, ceramics, textiles, wood, printmaking or wall painting where
they progressed from apprentice, to journeyman, to master craftsman.
Key examples of the Bauhaus and its approaches are presented here.
From the outset, the school was considered to be both politically and
artistically radical. In 1925, authorities forced the school to close in
Weimar because of its perceived cultural bolshevism. The Bauhaus
relocated to the industrial city of Dessau and in 1928 the architect Hannes
Meyer took over as director. Growing political pressure forced the Bauhaus
to move again, this time to Berlin in 1932. The Nazis closed the Bauhaus
permanently in 1933 after police raided what had essentially become a
school of architecture under the direction of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Bauhaus: school building at Dessau, GermanyGeneral Photographic

Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images school of design, architecture, and
applied arts that existed in Germany from 1919 to 1933. It was based in
Weimar until 1925, Dessau through 1932, and Berlin in its final months.
The Bauhaus was founded by the architect Walter Gropius, who combined
two schools, the Weimar Academy of Arts and the Weimar School of Arts
and Crafts, into what he called the Bauhaus, or house of building, a
name derived by inverting the German word Hausbau, building of a
house. Gropius house of building included the teaching of various
crafts, which he saw as allied to architecture, the matrix of the arts. By
training students equally in art and in technically expert craftsmanship,
the Bauhaus sought to end the schism between the two.
Beginning in the mid-19th century, reformers led by the English
designer William Morris had sought to bridge the same division by
emphasizing high-quality handicrafts in combination with design
appropriate to its purpose. By the last decade of that century, these
efforts had led to the Arts and Crafts Movement. While extending the Arts
and Crafts attentiveness to good design for every aspect of daily living,
the forward-looking Bauhaus rejected the Arts and Crafts emphasis on
individually executed luxury objects. Realizing that machine production
had to be the precondition of design if that effort was to have any impact
in the 20th century, Gropius directed the schools design efforts
toward mass manufacture. On the example of Gropius ideal, modern
designers have since thought in terms of producing functional and

aesthetically pleasing objects for mass society rather than individual items
for a wealthy elite.
Before being admitted to the workshops, students at the Bauhaus were
required to take a six-month preliminary course taught variously by
Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, and Lszl Moholy-Nagy. The workshops
carpentry, metal, pottery, stained glass, wall painting, weaving,
graphics, typography, and stagecraftwere generally taught by two
people: an artist (called the Form Master), who emphasized theory, and a
craftsman, who emphasized techniques and technical processes. After
three years of workshop instruction, the student received a journeymans
diploma.
The Bauhaus included among its faculty several outstanding artists of the
20th century. In addition to the above-mentioned, some of its teachers
were Paul Klee (stained-glass and painting), Wassily Kandinsky(wall
painting), Lyonel Feininger (graphic arts), Oskar Schlemmer (stagecraft
and also sculpture), Marcel Breuer (interiors), Herbert Bayer (typography
and advertising), Gerhard Marcks (pottery), and Georg Muche (weaving). A
severe but elegant geometric style carried out with great economy of
means has been considered characteristic of the Bauhaus, though in fact
the works produced were richly diverse.
Although Bauhaus members had been involved in architectural work from
1919 (notably, the construction in Dessau of administrative, educational,
and residential quarters designed by Gropius), the department of
architecture, central to Gropius program in founding this unique school,
was not established until 1927; Hannes Meyer, a Swiss architect, was
appointed chairman. Upon Gropius resignation the following year, Meyer
became director of the Bauhaus until 1930. He was asked to resign
because of his left-wing political views, which brought him into conflict
with Dessau authorities. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe became the new
director until the Nazi regime forced the school to close in 1933.
The Bauhaus had far-reaching influence. Its workshop products were
widely reproduced, and widespread acceptance of functional,
unornamented designs for objects of daily use owes much to Bauhaus
precept and example. Bauhaus teaching methods and ideals were
transmitted throughout the world by faculty and students. Today, nearly
every art curriculum includes foundation courses in which, on the Bauhaus
model, students learn about the fundamental elements of design. Among
the best known of Bauhaus-inspired educational efforts was the
achievement of Moholy-Nagy, who founded the New Bauhaus (later
renamed the Institute of Design) in Chicago in 1937, the same year in

which Gropius was appointed chairman of the Harvard School of

Architecture. A year later Mies moved to Chicago to head the department
of architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology (then known as the
Armour Institute), and eventually he designed its new campus.

BauhausDessau
Bauhaus(1919-1933)
The Bauhaus occupies a place of its own in the history of 20th century
culture, architecture, design, art and new media. One of the first schools
of design, it brought together a number of the most outstanding
contemporary architects and artists and was
not only an innovative training centre but also a place of production and a
focus of international debate. At a time when industrial society was in the
grip of a crisis, the Bauhaus stood almost alone in asking how the
modernisation process could be
mastered by means of design.
Architecture at the Bauhaus
"The building is the ultimate goal of all fine art, the Bauhaus manifesto
proclaimed back in 1919. Architecture training at the Bauhaus in Weimar
was initially the prerogative of Walter Gropius private architectural
practice and for a short time courses were run by his partner Adolf Meyer
and in association with the "Baugewerkschule" (building trades school) in
Weimar. The Bauhaus workshops were involved in these efforts through
Gropiuss office. This collaboration produced the Haus Am Horn and other
buildings in 1923. Plans for a Bauhaus estate remained unimplemented.
Some new methods based on specific types and standardisation were
employed not only to produce new
architecture but to anticipate a new lifestyle through this architecture.
Although the Bauhaus lacked an architecture department, it was the
buildings designed in Gropiuss office and erected from 1925 onwards
among which the Bauhaus building
itself and the Masters Houses enjoy pride of place which dominated the
image of the years in Dessau right from the outset. In 1927 Walter Gropius
offered Hannes Meyer a
position in charge of architecture classes. That year Hannes Meyer began
to put together a curriculum which included all relevant subjects such as
planning, design,

draftsmanship, construction, town planning. Architecture for Walter

Gropius and Hannes Meyer alike mainly denoted the "design of lifes
processes". Hannes Meyer went far beyond Gropiuss "study of
essentials, which focused too much on the object for his taste, turning his
teaching programme into one where the concrete conditions in society
and the factors determining architecture and its use formed the starting
point for all
planning and design. The habits of the future residents of an estate or a
house were studied in scientific detail. Students from various years
worked together in "vertical
brigades on the design and erection of buildings such as the balcony
access houses in Dessau and the labour unions school in Bernau near
Berlin. Carl Fieger, the engineer
Friedrich Khn, Hans Wittwer, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Anton Brenner, Alcar
Rudelt and Mart Stam taught in the architecture department.
From 1930 to 1933 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe carried on with much of
what had been started under his predecessors. The retention of teachers
like Ludwig Hilberseimer helped to ensure a certain continuity after the
change of director. At the same time Mies
van der Rohe streamlined the curriculum to produce something like a
system of courses which left almost no room for utopian experiments. The
majority of the new student
intake at the Bauhaus had already completed a course of studies, and the
Bauhaus became a "postgraduate school" (Wolsdorff, Bauhaus archive
berlin). Mies van der Rohes teaching focused on the design of specific
buildings whose appearance owed
nothing to Gropiuss "study of essentials or to the collective satisfaction
of the peoples needs, but which were to be "the spatial implementation
of intellectual decisions (Mies van der Rohe) in an aesthetically
consummate fashion.

Modernism first emerged in the early twentieth century, and by the 1920s,
the prominent figures of the movement Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius,
and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe - had established their reputations.
However it was not until after the Second World War that it gained mass
popularity, after modernist planning was implemented as a solution to the
previous failure of architecture and design to meet basic social needs.
During the 1930s as much as 15% of the urban populations were living in
poverty, and slum clearance was one of the many social problems of this
decade.[1] Modernist planning was a popular idea, and used as a solution
to these problems. But the movement could not adequately comprehend
and cater for the social dynamics of family and community, and a result,
many modernist buildings were pulled down in the seventies. With
reference to key architectural studies, this essay discusses the principles
of modernism, how modernist architects initially worked to solve design
problems through the creation of urban utopias, and why the ambitious
modernist dream ultimately failed.
Students at the Bauhaus school of design were taught purity of form and
to design for a better world by Walter Gropius. The phrase form follows
function is often used when discussing the principles of modernism. It
asserts that forms should be simplified architectural designs should bear
no more ornament than is necessary to function. Modernists believe that

ornament should follow the structure and purpose of the building. Family
life and social interaction was at the centre of the modernist dream for a
planned environment. The vision was for trouble free areas by mixing
blocks with terraces to create squares, zoning services and amenities, all
interlinked by roads.[2] The modernists planned for zoned areas where
residential and commercial amenities were distinct and separate. In his
introduction to Modernism in Design, Paul Greenhalgh outlined key
features in modernist design including function, progress, anti-historicism
and social morality.[3] These principles can be found in many of the key
realisations of the modernist dream Le Corbusiers famous Villa Savoye
in Poissy,France is a prime example. It shows no reference to historic
architectural design; the pioneering plan was a progressive leap for the
late 1920s. The form clearly follows the intended functions of the
residential building, bearing no unnecessary ornament, and the open
space surrounding the structure as well as the open plan interior lends
itself to the ideals of social living and communication. The modernist
ideals were not applied to social housing until 1937, when Maxwell Frys
Kensal House in London applied the principles of the movement to a social
housing scheme. It was a success and is still popular with its residents
today. It then became the prototype for other social housing projects to
follow the example of modern living.

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