Bauhaus

Revision

History

• The foundation of Bauhaus occurred at a time of political and cultural upheaval in Germany.

• Defeat in World War I, the fall of the Germany monarchy and the abolition of censorship under the new, liberal Weimar Republic allowed an upsurge of radical experimentation in all the arts, previously suppressed by the old regime.

• Many Germans of left-wing views were influenced by the cultural experimentation that followed the Russian Revolution, such as constructivism.

Influences

• The most important influence on Bauhaus was modernism, a cultural movement whose origins lay as far back as the 1880s.

• The design innovations commonly associated with Gropius and the Bauhaus were already partly developed in Germany before the Bauhaus was founded.

• These innovations were:– the radically simplified forms, – the rationality and functionality, and – the idea that mass-production was reconcilable

with the individual artistic spirit

Characteristics

• There are a number of characteristics to the Bauhaus/International Style of architecture:

1) It shuns ornamentation and favours functionality

2) Uses asymmetry and regularity versus symmetry

3) It grasps architecture in terms of space versus mass

Ideology• Bauhaus architecture was concerned with the

social aspects of design and with the creation of a new form of social housing for workers.

• This may be just another one of the reasons it was embraced in the newly evolving cities, at a time when socialist ideas were so prevalent.

• This style of architecture came about because of new engineering developments that allowed the walls to be built around steel or iron frames.

• Walls no longer had to support the structure, but only enveloped it – from the outside.

Ideology

• Perhaps no trend within Modern architecture so neatly captures the imagination as the almost mythic status of the Bauhaus.

• The famed institution was conceived as a reformation of applied arts education.

• The principle was simple: to reject the salon arts of the haute-bourgeoisie in favour of a craft tradition in order to erase the class distinctions between artist and craftsman.

Ideology

• Yet this was not a rejection of the modernizing impulses of the rapidly industrializing, urbanizing German state (one that was facing an increasingly dire socio-economic predicament).

• Instead, as developed by Bauhaus director Walter Gropius, the applied arts were to be taught in a workshop-based design education, with a reconciliation of craft design and industrial production.

Evolution

• Under the tutelage of pioneering Modernists, including– Lázló Moholy-Nagy, – Marcel Breuer, and – Theo Van Doesberg,

• The Bauhaus students produced work inspired by a stripped-down, functional aesthetic, one obviously influenced by Russian Constructivism.

Evolution• Their approach rejected the classical notion of

composition through contrasting materials and forms

• It sought to bring out aesthetic properties inherent in the materials themselves, as revealed through their disjunction and arrangement in space.

• From Herbert Bayer’s sans-serif typography to Gropius’s seminal Bauhaus building of 1926, there emerged an objective sensibility that championed elements devoid of ornamentation and excessive detail.

• The objective approach led to an embrace of a serialized industrial production process that was applied to any variety of craft making, from the assembly of chairs to the weaving of tapestries.

Evolution

• The school existed in three German cities: – Weimar from 1919 to 1925,– Dessau from 1925 to 1932 and – Berlin from 1932 to 1933

• It worked under three different architect-directors: – Gropius from 1919 to 1927, – Meyer from 1927 to 1930 and – Mies van der Rohe from 1930 to 1933,

• The school was closed by the Nazi regime. • The changes of venue and leadership resulted in

a constant shifting of focus, technique, instructors, and politics.

Building

• Gropious designed the Bauhaus building at Dessau, the most emblematic construction of the movement.

• The first important work made by Gropius was the Fagus factory in 1911. It was conceit as a beautiful combination of iron and glass, but its main work is the Bauhaus building in which teachers and students collaborated.

• The plan of the Bauhaus building is formed by three sections that expand freely and multiply the points of view. The walls are of concrete and glass.

Architects

• Some of the main architects who collaborated in this project were:– Walter Gropius

• Bauhaus building at Dessau• Fagus factory

– Mies van der Rohe• Pavilion for Barcelona’s Exhibition• Seagram Building

– Le Corbusier• Notre Dame du Haute• Unité d´habitation at Marseille