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.
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
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 right, 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 Dessau 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.

The Bauhaus Philosophy

The Bauhaus was founded with the idea of creating a 'total' work of art in which all arts,
including architecture would be brought together. Principal among the objectives of the Bauhaus
was to unify art, craft, and technology. The major philosophical objectives of the Bauhaus can be
understood by the under listed statements:
1. Bauhaus architecture featured functional design devoid of ornamentation (in contrast to the
elaborate Gothic architecture of Germany) and marked by harmony between the function of an
object or a building and its design.
2. Design innovations usually associated with Gropius and the Bauhaus are:
a). Radically simplified forms, rationality and functionality,
b). The idea that mass-production could be reconciled with the individual artistic spirit (already
partly developed in Germany before the Bauhaus was founded.)
A noteworthy influence was that of the 19th century English designer William Morris (Arts and
Crafts Movement, England), who had argued that art should meet the needs of society and that
there should be no distinction between form and function. The most significant influence on
Bauhaus however, was modernism, a cultural movement whose origins lay as far back as the 1880s.

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)

Typewriter Olivetti Studio 42 designed by the Bauhaus-alumnus Alexander

Schawinsky in 1936.

Impact
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 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.
Epilogue
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.

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.