BAUHAUS MOVEMENT

Walter Gropius, founder of Bauhaus school of

architecture

Gropius was born in Berlin on May 18, 1883 and died in

Boston on July 5, 1969. Gropius left the Bauhaus in 1928,
worked as an architect in Berlin, then moved to London
in 1934. In 1937, he was appointed the head of the
architecture department at Harvard University. At
number 8 Geschwister-Scholl Strasse, is the Hochschule
für Architektur and Bauwesen, which is the school for
modern architecture and construction. The school,
located in a seedy area of Weimar which would have to
be described truthfully as a slum; the neighborhood is a
testament to the failure of Communism in East Germany.
All the famous buildings in Weimar are painted yellow;
the yellow color is taken from the leaves of the ginkgo
tree in the fall. Weimar has many ginkgo trees, which
were introduced by Goethe, who was a naturalist as well as a poet and writer.

The school reopened as the State College of Architecture and Fine Arts in 1946 after the occupation of
Weimar by the Communist Soviet Union. The Fine Arts was dropped in 1951. Between 1950 and 1962,
the school included classes for the Communist workers and farmers in addition to building trades
classes.

The Bauhaus Dessau

Typography by Herbert Bayer above the entrance

to the workshop block of the Bauhaus, Dessau,
2005
Staatliches Bauhaus , commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined
crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It
operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term Bauhaus, literally "house of construction"
stood for "School of Building". The Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar. In spite
of its name, and the fact that its founder was an architect, the Bauhaus did not have an architecture
department during the first years of its existence. Nonetheless it was founded with the idea of creating
a 'total' work of art in which all arts, including architecture would eventually be brought together. The
Bauhaus style became one of the most influential currents in Modernist architecture and modern
design. The Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture,
graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography.

The origins of the Bauhaus movement of modern art and architecture date back to the controversial
new school of arts and crafts which was established in Weimar in 1902 by the Belgian artist Henry van
de Velde. Another art school had already been founded in 1860 which was also the subject of disputes.
The pioneering architect Walter Gropius combined both schools into the Staatliches Bauhaus on April
1, 1919 to start the Bauhaus movement which spread around the world. In 1919, Weimar had become
the center of new social and political ideas when the city was chosen as the place for the writing of the
constitution of the new Republic proclaimed by the Social Democrats on Nov. 9, 1918. The central idea
behind the teaching at the Bauhaus was productive workshops. The Bauhaus contained a carpenter's
workshop, a metal workshop, a pottery in Dormburg, facilities for painting on glass, mural painting,
weaving, printing, wood and stone sculpting. The Bauhaus architecture featured functional design, as
opposed to the elaborate Gothic architecture of Germany. Famous modern artists like Paul Klee, Lyonel
Feininger and Wassily Kandinsky were invited to lecture at the school. This school goes back to the Art
School founded in 1860 and directed by Stanislaus Graf von Kalckreuth (1820 - 1894). In 1907, it was
combined with the College of Arts and Crafts founded by Henry van de Velde and continued by
Walter Gropius as the Staatliches Bauhaus in 1919. In 1925 it became the College of Trades and
Architecture after the Bauhaus architects were run out of town by the right wing conservatives.

The school existed in three German cities (Weimar from 1919 to 1925, Dessau from 1925 to 1932 and
Berlin from 1932 to 1933), under three different architect-directors: Walter Gropius from 1919 to 1928,
Hannes Meyer from 1928 to 1930 and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930 until 1933, when the school
was closed by its own leadership under pressure from the Nazi regime.

The changes of venue and leadership resulted in a constant shifting of focus, technique, instructors, and
politics. For instance: the pottery shop was discontinued when the school moved from Weimar to
Dessau, even though it had been an important revenue source; when Mies van der Rohe took over the
school in 1930, he transformed it into a private school, and would not allow any supporters of Hannes
Meyer to attend it.

Bauhaus and German modernism

Germany's defeat in World War I, the fall of the German 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. Such influences
can be overstated: Gropius himself did not share these radical views, and said that Bauhaus was
entirely apolitical. Just as important was the influence of the 19th century English designer William
Morris, who had argued that art should meet the needs of society and that there should be no
distinction between form and function. Thus the Bauhaus style, also known as the International Style,
was marked by the absence of ornamentation and by harmony between the function of an object or a
building and its design.

However, the most important influence on Bauhaus was modernism, a cultural movement whose
origins lay as far back as the 1880s, and which had already made its presence felt in Germany before
the World War, despite the prevailing conservatism. The design innovations commonly associated with
Gropius and the Bauhaus—the radically simplified forms, the rationality and functionality, and the
idea that mass-production was reconcilable with the individual artistic spirit—were already partly
developed in Germany before the Bauhaus was founded. The German national designers' organization
Deutscher Werkbund was formed in 1907 by Hermann Muthesius to harness the new potentials of
mass production, with a mind towards preserving Germany's economic competitiveness with England.
In its first seven years, the Werkbund came to be regarded as the authoritative body on questions of
design in Germany, and was copied in other countries

The entire movement of German architectural modernism was known as Neues Bauen. Beginning in
June 1907, Peter Behrens' pioneering industrial design work for the German electrical company AEG
successfully integrated art and mass production on a large scale. He designed consumer products,
standardized parts, created clean-lined designs for the company's graphics, developed a consistent
corporate identity, built the modernist landmark AEG Turbine Factory, and made full use of newly
developed materials such as poured concrete and exposed steel. Behrens was a founding member of
the Werkbund, and both Walter Gropius and Adolf Meier worked for him in this period. Beyond the
Bauhaus, many other significant German-speaking architects in the 1920s responded to the same
aesthetic issues and material possibilities as the school. They also responded to the promise of a
"minimal dwelling" written into the new Weimar Constitution. Ernst May, Bruno Taut, and Martin
Wagner, among others, built large housing blocks in Frankfurt and Berlin. The acceptance of modernist
design into everyday life was the subject of publicity campaigns, well-attended public exhibitions like
the Weissenhof Estate, films, and sometimes fierce public debate.

Bauhaus and Vkhutemas

Vkhutemas, the Russian state art and technical school founded in 1920 in Moscow, has been compared
to Bauhaus. Founded a year after the Bauhaus school, Vkhutemas has close parallels to the German
Bauhaus in its intent, organization and scope. The two schools were the first to train artist-designers in
a modern manner. Both schools were state-sponsored initiatives to merge the craft tradition with
modern technology, with a Basic Course in aesthetic principles, courses in color theory, industrial
design, and architecture. Vkhutemas was a larger school than the Bauhaus, but it was less publicised
outside the Soviet Union and consequently, is less
familiar to the West.

Bauhaus building in Dessau

College of Architecture, Building and Construction in Weimar
The main building, pictured left, was built in
1911; it was designed by van de Velde to house
the sculptors’ studio at the Grand Ducal Saxon
Art School. Designated as a UNESCO World
Heritage Site in 1996).

In the pamphlet for an April 1919 exhibition

entitled "Exhibition of Unknown Architects",
Gropius proclaimed his goal as being "to create
a new guild of craftsmen, without the class
distinctions which raise an arrogant barrier
between craftsman and artist." Gropius' neologism Bauhaus references both building and the Bauhütte,
a pre-modern guild of stonemasons. The early intention was for the Bauhaus to be a combined
architecture school, crafts school, and academy of the arts. In 1919 Swiss painter Johannes Itten,
German-American painter Lyonel Feininger, and German sculptor Gerhard Marcks, along with
Gropius, comprised the faculty of the Bauhaus. By the following year their ranks had grown to include
German painter, sculptor and designer Oskar Schlemmer who headed the theater workshop, and Swiss
painter Paul Klee, joined in 1922 by Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky. A tumultuous year at the
Bauhaus, 1922 also saw the move of Dutch
painter Theo van Doesburg to Weimar to
promote De Stijl ("The Style"), and a visit to the
Bauhaus by Russian Constructivist artist and
architect El Lissitzky.

Foyer of the Bauhaus-University Weimar

Gropius wanted to reunite art and craft to

arrive at high-end functional products with
artistic pretensions. The Bauhaus issued a
magazine called Bauhaus and a series of books
called "Bauhausbücher". Since the Weimar
Republic lacked the quantity of raw materials available to the United States and Great Britain, it had to
rely on the proficiency of a skilled labor force and an ability to export innovative and high quality
goods. Therefore designers were needed and so was a new type of art education. The school's
philosophy stated that the artist should be trained to work with the industry.

Weimar was in the German state of Thuringia, and the Bauhaus school received state support from the
Social Democrat-controlled Thuringian state government. The school in Weimar experienced political
pressure from conservative circles in Thuringian politics, increasingly so after 1923 as political tension
rose. In February 1924, the Social Democrats lost control of the state parliament to the Nationalists. On
26 December 1924 the Bauhaus issued a press release and setting the closure of the school for the end of
March 1925. At this point they had already been looking for alternative sources of funding. After the
Bauhaus moved to Dessau, a school of industrial design with teachers and staff less antagonistic to the
conservative political regime remained in Weimar. This school was eventually known as the Technical
University of Architecture and Civil Engineering, and in 1996 changed its name to Bauhaus-University
Weimar.

The Bauhaus Dessau

Gropius's design for the Dessau facilities was a return to the futuristic Gropius of 1914 that had more in
common with the International style lines of the Fagus Factory than the stripped down Neo-classical of
the Werkbund pavilion or the Völkisch Sommerfeld House. The Dessau years saw a remarkable
change in direction for the school. According to Elaine Hoffman, Gropius had approached the Dutch
architect Mart Stam to run the newly founded architecture program, and when Stam declined the
position, Gropius turned to Stam's friend and colleague in the ABC group, Hannes Meyer.

Meyer became director when Gropius resigned in February 1928, and brought the Bauhaus its two
most significant building commissions, both of which still exist: five apartment buildings in the city of
Dessau, and the headquarters of the Federal School of the German Trade Unions (ADGB) in Bernau.
Meyer favored measurements and calculations in his presentations to clients, along with the use of off-
the-shelf architectural components to reduce costs, and this approach proved attractive to potential
clients. The school turned its first profit under his leadership in 1929.

But Meyer also generated a great deal of conflict. As a radical functionalist, he had no patience with the
aesthetic program, and forced the resignations of Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, and other long-time
instructors. As a vocal Communist, he encouraged the formation of a communist student organization.
In the increasingly dangerous political atmosphere, this became a threat to the existence of the Dessau
school. Gropius fired him in the summer of 1930. The Dressau city council attempted to convince
Gropius to return as head of the school, but Gropius instead suggested Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Mies was appointed in 1930, and immediately interviewed each student, dismissing those that he
deemed uncommitted. Mies halted the school's manufacture of goods so that the school could focus on
teaching. Mies appointed no new faculty other than his close confidant Lilly Reich. By 1931, the
National Socialist German Workers' Party was starting to gain influence and control in German politics.
They gained control of the Dressau City Council and moved to close the school.
Berlin
In late 1932, Mies rented a derelict factory in Berlin to use as the new Bauhaus with his own money.
The students and faculty rehabilitated the building, painting the interior white. The school operated for
ten months without further interference from the Nazi Party. In 1933, the Gestapo closed down the
Berlin school. Mies protested the decision, eventually speaking to the head of the Gestapo, who agreed
to allow the school to re-open. However, shortly after receiving a letter permitting the opening of the
Bauhaus, Mies and the other faculty agreed to voluntarily shut down the school. The closure, and the
response of Mies van der Rohe, is fully documented in Elaine Hochman's Architects of Fortune.

Although neither the Nazi Party nor Hitler himself had a cohesive architectural policy before they came
to power in 1933, Nazi writers like Wilhelm Frick and Alfred Rosenberg had already labeled the
Bauhaus "un-German" and criticized its modernist styles, deliberately generating public controversy
over issues like flat roofs. Increasingly through the early 1930s, they characterized the Bauhaus as a
front for communists and social liberals. Indeed, a number of communist students loyal to Meyer
moved to the Soviet Union when he was fired in 1930.

Even before the Nazis came to power, political pressure on Bauhaus had increased. The Nazi
movement, from nearly the start, denounced the Bauhaus for its "degenerate art", and the Nazi regime
was determined to crack down on what it saw as the foreign, probably Jewish influences of
"cosmopolitan modernism." Despite Gropius's protestations that as a war veteran and a patriot his
work had no subversive political intent, the Berlin Bauhaus was pressured to close in April 1933.
Emigrants did succeed, however, in spreading the concepts of the Bauhaus to other countries,
including the “New Bauhaus” of Chicago: Mies decided to emigrate to the United States for the
directorship of the School of Architecture at the Armour Institute (now IIT) in Chicago and to seek
building commissions. Curiously, however, some Bauhaus influences lived on in Nazi Germany.
When Hitler's chief engineer, Fritz Todt, began opening the new autobahn (highways) in 1935, many of
the bridges and service stations were "bold examples of modernism" – among those submitting designs
was Mies van der Rohe.

Architectural output

Bauhaus building in Chemnitz

 The Engel House in the White City of Tel Aviv:
architect: Ze'ev Rechter, 1933; a residential
building that has become one of the symbols of
Modernist architecture and the first building in
Tel Aviv to be built on pilotis

A stage in the Festsaal

Ceiling with light fixtures for stage in the Festsaal

Dormitory balconies in the residence

 Mechanically opened windows

The Mensa (Cafeteria)

Impact
Typewriter Olivetti Studio 42 designed by the Bauhaus-
alumnus Alexander Schawinsky in 1936

The Bauhaus had a major impact on art and architecture

trends in Western Europe, the United States, Canada and
Israel in the decades following its demise, as many of the
artists involved fled, or were exiled, by the Nazi regime. Tel
Aviv, in fact, in 2004 was named to the list of world heritage
sites by the UN due to its abundance of Bauhaus architecture;
it had some 4,000 Bauhaus buildings erected from 1933 on.

Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and László Moholy-Nagy re-

assembled in Britain during the mid 1930s to live and work in
the Isokon project before the war caught up with them. Both
Gropius and Breuer went to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and worked together
before their professional split. Their collaboration produced The Aluminum City Terrace in New
Kensington, Pennsylvania and the Alan I W Frank House in Pittsburgh, among other projects. The
Harvard School was enormously influential in America in the late 1920s and early 1930s, producing
such students as Philip Johnson, I.M. Pei, Lawrence Halprin and Paul Rudolph, among many others.
In the late 1930s, Mies van der Rohe re-settled in Chicago, enjoyed the sponsorship of the influential
Philip Johnson, and became one of the pre-eminent architects in the world. Moholy-Nagy also went to
Chicago and founded the New Bauhaus school under the sponsorship of industrialist and
philanthropist Walter Paepcke. This school became the Institute of Design, part of the Illinois Institute
of Technology. Printmaker and painter Werner Drewes was also largely responsible for bringing the
Bauhaus aesthetic to America and taught at both Columbia University and Washington University in
St. Louis. Herbert Bayer, sponsored by Paepcke, moved to Aspen, Colorado in support of Paepcke's
Aspen projects at the Aspen Institute. In 1953, Max Bill, together with Inge Aicher-Scholl and Otl
Aicher, founded the Ulm School of Design (German: Hochschule für Gestaltung – HfG Ulm) in Ulm,
Germany, a design school in the tradition of the Bauhaus. The school is notable for its inclusion of
semiotics as a field of study. One of the main objectives of the Bauhaus was to unify art, craft, and
technology. The machine was considered a positive element, and therefore industrial and product
design were important components. Vorkurs ("initial" or "preliminary course") was taught; this is the
modern day "Basic Design" course that has become one of the key foundational courses offered in
architectural and design schools across the globe. There was no teaching of history in the school
because everything was supposed to be designed and created according to first principles rather than
by following precedent.

One of the most important contributions of the Bauhaus is in the field of modern furniture design. The
ubiquitous Cantilever chair and the Wassily Chair designed by Marcel Breuer are two examples.
(Breuer eventually lost a legal battle in Germany with Dutch architect/designer Mart Stam over the
rights to the cantilever chair patent. Although Stam had worked on the design of the Bauhaus's 1923
exhibit in Weimar, and guest-lectured at the Bauhaus later in the 1920s, he was not formally associated
with the school, and he and Breuer had worked independently on the cantilever concept, thus leading
to the patent dispute.) The single most profitable tangible product of the Bauhaus was its wallpaper.

The physical plant at Dessau survived World War II and was operated as a design school with some
architectural facilities by the German Democratic Republic. This included live stage productions in the
Bauhaus theater under the name of Bauhausbühne ("Bauhaus Stage"). After German reunification, a
reorganized school continued in the same building, with no essential continuity with the Bauhaus
under Gropius in the early 1920s. In 1979 Bauhaus-Dessau College started to organize postgraduate
programs with participants from all over the world. This effort has been supported by the Bauhaus-
Dessau Foundation which was founded in 1974 as a public institution.

Later evaluation of the Bauhaus design credo was critical of its flawed recognition of the human
element, an acknowledgement of “…the dated, unattractive aspects of the Bauhaus as a projection of
utopia marked by mechanistic views of human nature…Home hygiene without home atmosphere.”

As noted in Walter Isaacson's 2011 biography, Steve Jobs was heavily influenced by the Bauhaus
movement.

The White City

The White City of Tel Aviv (Hebrew: ‫הלבנה העיר‬, Ha-Ir HaLevana) refers to a collection of over 4,000
Bauhaus or International style buildings built in Tel Aviv from the 1930s by German Jewish architects
who immigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine after the rise of the Nazis. Tel Aviv has the largest
number of buildings in this style of any city in the world. In 2003, the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) proclaimed Tel Aviv's White City a World Cultural
Heritage site, as "an outstanding example of new town planning and architecture in the early 20th
century." Established in 2000, The Bauhaus Center in Tel Aviv is an organization dedicated to the
ongoing documentation of the architectural heritage. In 2003, it hosted an exhibition on preservation of
the architecture that showcased 25 buildings. To further the architectural culture in the city, a Bauhaus
Museum opened in Tel Aviv in 2008, designed by Israeli architect Ron Arad

Bauhaus artists
Bauhaus was not a formal group, but rather a school. Its three architect-directors (Walter Gropius,
Hannes Meyer, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) are most closely associated with Bauhaus.
Furthermore a large number of outstanding artists of their time were lecturers at Bauhaus:

Anni Albers Ludwig Hilberseimer

Josef Albers Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack
Herbert Bayer Johannes Itten
Max Bill Wassily Kandinsky
Marianne Brandt Paul Klee
Marcel Breuer Otto Lindig
Avgust Černigoj Gerhard Marcks
Christian Dell Werner Drewes László Moholy-Nagy
Lyonel Feininger Piet Mondrian
Naum Gabo Oskar Schlemmer
Lothar Schreyer Joost Schmidt
Naum Slutzky Gunta Stölzl.