The Bauhaus

The beginnings of what good design is, is demonstrated in the Bauhaus. Here, design was innovative, functional and honest. The Bauhaus was the most celebrated art school representing the modern era and it was closed down, as instructed by the Nazi Government on 11^th April 1933.

Peter Behrens who was the chief designer of AEG had left Berlin for private architectural business, and amongst the people who he had working with him was Charles Edouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier. So did Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, these were two directors of the Bauhaus. Therefore Behrens's ideas and activities were of both a detriment and influence to the Bauhaus. 

During the Great Exhibition held in the Crystal Palace, whilst there where those who were impressed, others were shocked by what they saw before them. One of the latter was William Morris.  Morris held the opinion that it was not honest for a machine manufactured good to pretend that it was made by hand. He believed that the effects the industrial production had left were spiritually destructive to the art of the craftsmen. Morris aimed at the revival of the traditional craftsmanship, unfortunately however, his ideas did not flourish since the products produced would be affordable only to the rich.

Peter Behrens, illustrated the way in which the concerns of Morris found concrete expression in Germany. In 1903 he was appointed as the director of the arts and crafts school at Düsseldorf and comprehending the repercussions of industrialization and the potential of the machine, he restructured the school’s curriculum in an attempt to reunite traditional craftsmanship and the mechanized production. This therefore illustrates that what William Morris began, was continued in the Bauhaus since Behrens was a huge influence on the people connected to the Bauhaus.

Walter Gropius was chosen in 1919, not to create a new school but to direct the combined academy, which was already in existence. When he was given the permission to give the school a name, he chose the name ‘the State Bauhaus’. With this name, Gropius’ plan was to envision the impression of sowing or nurturing what was already in existence.

‘Four years of the Bauhaus reflect not only a period of art history, but a history of the ties, too, because the disintegration of a nation and of an era is also reflected in it’- Oskar Schlemmer.

This statement shows that the history of the Bauhaus was shaped upon the social and cultural context of those years. The Bauhaus lasted until the Weimar Republic, before Hitler was appointed.

The first months of the Bauhaus are demonstrated by the willpower to reform art education as well as by the creation of a new type of society. Unfortunately though, it had to redefine its aims and had to merge realism into the picture.

In the subsequent years of the school, ideas of self-expression where replaced by rational ones and this introduced essential changes in the curriculum and teaching methods. This occurred during the time when the economy of Germany was steady and the notion of the industry began to grow. At this time, political extremities gained also their strengths and directly effected the Bauhaus.

Walter Gropius was a soldier during World War I, and he became anti-capitalist, so he favored more the ideals relating to the craft of the Helgar workshops rather than the Deutscher Werkbund and their beliefs relating to industrial production.

According to Walter Gropius, construction was not only essential, but also a symbolic and intellectual attempt and this belief was infused into the Bauhaus teachings. The school’s curriculum included one year of an introductory course. Here students were taught the basic principles of design and colour theory. Succeeding this year, student could then enter a variety of workshops, specializing into one. The tutors were known as ‘masters’, while the students were referred to as ‘apprentices’.

'Gyula Pap' candelebra made in the metal workshop in Weimar 1922-1923

Throughout the first year of the school, Gropius appointed three artists to join the academy. These were; Johannes Itten, who was responsible for the preliminary course, Lyonel Feininger and Gerhard Marcks. Later, others Expressionists joined them including; Georg Muche, Paul Klee and Oscar Schlemmer and Wassily Kandinsky. During the earliest period of the Bauhaus it was Itten who played the most important role.

Itten’s classes, frequently begun with breathing exercises and gymnastics and these were based upon ‘intuition and method’ or ‘subjective experience and objective recognition’. Itten taught theories of form, colour and contrast together with the history of art. Apprentices were taught the importance of elemental geometric forms such as the circle and the square. Similarly to Kandinsky, Itten attempted to reestablish the spiritual to art.

During an exhibition which was thrown to justify financial aid, work for the De Stijl movement was also demonstrated and this indicates how this movement inspired the Bauhaus. In fact, Theo van Doesburg had lectured in Weimar.

Poster of Bauhaus exhibition in Copper-Hewitt for a class project

In this exhibition, the ‘New Typography’ of the Bauhaus which was inspired by the De Stijl and the Russian Constructivism movements, was also demonstrated.

The third and final phase of the Bauhaus is indicated by the time when the school had to leave its premises. This was the result of the revoking of funds from the nationalist government. The Bauhaus transferred to Dessau. When this move occurred, the school made a different direction this time prioritizing the demands of the industry.

The Bauhaus Dessau building itself, with its highly balanced assembly, was an important training point for the school from crafts towards industrial functionalism. The masters were now referred to as professors. By this period Gropius now believed that in order to survive, the Bauhaus needed to adopt an industrial approach to design.  

It was believed that the application of functionalism was to cater for a better society, and with this thought the Bauhaus designs were made for industrial production and a machine aesthetic was consciously adopted.

Marcel Breuer chairs; on the left, Latenstuhl made in the furniture workshop in Weimar, 1922-1924. 

Among the workshops in the Bauhaus, the cabinetmaking workshop was one of the most popular. Under the course of Marcel Breuer the essence of furniture was specialized and frequently conservative forms such as chairs were dematerialized. His theories were that by time objects such as chairs would become archaic, and inspired by the tubes of his bicycle, he experimented with metal furniture, creating lightweight, mass-producible metal chairs. Some of these chairs were deployed in the theater of the Dessau building.

The metal workshop was another popular space and was also one of the most successful in developing design prototypes for mass production. In this studio, designers such as Marianne Brandt, Wilhelm Wagenfeld, and Christian Dell created stunning, modern items such as lighting fixtures and tableware, and sometimes these objects were used in the Bauhaus campus itself.

Marianne Brandt, tea infuser and stainer; Brandt, interrelated a quantity of geometric forms such as the hemisphere and the circle. her design shows the forms relationship in space. the form of the teapot and the materials used serve as the only decorative elements and this reflects the emphasis upon simplicity of the Bauhaus.  

Kubus stacking containers made by Wilhelm Wagenfeld, the products are made of industrial glass which is heat-resistant. these are designed for a maximum use of storage and flexibility. 

In 1928, Hannes Meyer, a Swiss architect, agreed to take the position of director of the Bauhaus instead of Gropius. He held the directorship till July 1930. He believed that functionality and cost had to govern form. In this manner, the products would be both practical and affordable for the working-class customers. Mayer also tried to introduce lectures relating to economics, psychology, sociology and Marxism. Furthermore, he closed the theatre workshops and reorganized the other workshops. Under his domain, the school’s approach to design became more scientific.

When Mies van der Rohe took over the directorship, he closed the school, and when he re-opened it, the study of architecture was given more importance. This change transformed the Bauhaus into a school of architecture. And even though the applied art workshops were still in use, the products assembled could only be industrially manufactured.

Throughout the short existence of the Bauhaus, it triggered a revolution in art education, whose influences are still felt today. According to Wolf von Eckardt, the Bauhaus ‘created the patterns and set the standards of present-day industrial design; it helped to invent modern architecture; it altered the look of everything…’

Among the aims that the school had, the first one was to rescue all the arts from the situation of isolation in which each where found. Artists were to be taught and trained to work cooperative projects in which all their different abilities would be merged. Furthermore, the craft’s status was to be promoted and a contact with the leaders of the crafts and industries of the country was to be formed. In fact this was a case of economical survival.

On 19^th July 1993 a final vote was taken to dissolve the Bauhaus, and this formally marked the end of this institution.

The functionalist approach to design founded at the Bauhaus had a fundamental impression on following industrial design training and provided the philosophical foundation from which the Modern Movement progressed. The Bauhaus had also an intense impact in the manner in which design was taught.

Throughout the confusion that brought with it World War II, many of the important figures of the Bauhaus immigrated to the United States. Their work and teaching methods influenced generations upon generations of architects and designers to be. Marcel Breuer and Joseph Albers taught at Yale, Walter Gropius went to Harvard, and Moholy-Nagy established the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937.

Bibliography: 

Taschen. Design of the 20th Century

Frank Whiford. Bauhaus 

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, 2000. The Bauhaus, 1919-1933. [Online] Available at: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bauh/hd_bauh.htm [Accessed at 20th November 2013]