the bauhaus1

919

-1933

German lit. “Architecture House”

From Bau = Building (Bauen=to Build)

+ Haus = house

“House of Construction”

"School of Building"

Beginnings & influence

• 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

• The Bauhaus was founded at a time when the German zeitgeist ("spirit of the times") had turned from emotional Expressionism to the matter-of-fact New Objectivity

• 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

• 19th century English designer William Morris had argued that art should meet the needs of society and that there should be no distinction between form and function

Bauhaus/ Gropius’ Manifesto

Lyonel Feininger, Cathedral, woodcut, Cover of 1st program of BauhausApril 1919

The ultimate aim of all creative activity is a building! The decoration of buildings was once the noblest function of fine arts, and fine arts were indispensable to great architecture. Today they exist in complacentisolation, and can only be rescued by the conscious co-operation and collaboration of all craftsmen. Architects, painters, and sculptors must once again come to know and comprehend the composite character of a building, both as an entity and in terms of its various parts. Then their work will be filled with that true architectonic spirit which, as“salon art”, it has lost.” ... “Architects, painters, sculptors, we must all return to crafts! For there is no such thing as “professional art”. There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman.” ... “Let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen without the class-distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artists! Let us desire, conceive, and create the new building of the future together. It will combine architecture, sculpture, and painting in a single form

Bauhaus Goals

• Encourage the individual artisan and craftsman to work cooperatively and combine their skills;

• Elevate the status of crafts, chairs, lamps, teapots, etc., to the same level enjoyed by fine arts, painting, sculpting, etc.,

• Eventually gain independence from government support by selling designs to industry.

Bauhaus Style

• Geometric• Functional as in “Fitness of

purpose”• Asymmetry• Rectangular grid structures• Decorations limited to heavy

rules, rectangles, circles• Photography and montage

instead of realistic drawing• Influenced by Di Stijl “The

Style” & Constructivism• San Serif typefaces• No distinction of upper and

lower case

Joost Schmidt Poster for Bauhaus Exhibition in Weimar, July- September 1923

Bauhaus at Weimar (1919-1925)

Bauhaus at Weimar (1919-1925)

• founded by Walter Gropius in 1919 as a merger of the Grand Ducal School of Arts and Crafts and the Weimar Academy of Fine Art – school founded by

the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in 1906 and directed by Belgian Art Nouveau architect 

Henry van de Velde who was forced to resign in 1915 because he was Belgian

Johannes Auerbach, First Bauhaus Seal 1919

(TheState Home for Building)

Walter Adolph Gropius (May 18, 1883 – July 5, 1969)

• German architect• Born in Berlin• third child of Walter

Adolph Gropius, an architect, and Manon Auguste Pauline Scharnweber

• could not draw • dependent on collaborators and

partner-interpreters throughout his career

• In school, hired an assistant to complete his homework

• In 1908, worked in the firm of Peter Behrens, one of the first members of the utilitarian school

• His fellow employees at this time included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

• career was interrupted by World War I in 1914

• served as a sergeant major at the Western front and was wounded and almost killed

Works (Pre-Bauhaus)

Fagus Factory (1910-1911)• Bauhaus School and Faculty at Dessau (1925-1932)(1921) Sommerfeld House, Berlin, Germany designed for Adolf Sommerfeld

Works (during Bauhaus)

• the armchair F 51, designed for the Bauhaus's directors room in 1920 - nowadays a re-edition in the market, manufactured by the German company TECTA/Lauenfoerde

In 1923, Gropius designed his famous door handles, now considered an icon of 20th-century design and often listed as one of the most influential designs to emerge from Bauhaus.

Works (Post-Bauhaus)

1936 Village College, Impington, Cambridge, England 1949–1950 Harvard Graduate Center, Cambridge,

Massachusetts, USA (The Architects' Collaborative)[

1958–1963 Pan Am Building (now the Metlife

Building), New York, with Pietro Belluschi and project architects Emery

Roth & Sons

1960 Temple Oheb Shalom (Baltimore, Maryland)

The Gropius House

1937 The Gropius House, Lincoln, Massachusetts USA

Groupius House• The Gropius House was

the family residence of noted architect Walter Gropius at 68 Baker Bridge Road,Lincoln, Massachusetts

• The house was built with economy in mind, and total construction costs were $18,000

• It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2000

The Gropius House

Bauhaus at Weimar (1919-1925)

•  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

Johannes Auerbach, First Bauhaus Seal 1919

(TheState Home for Building)

• "Students at the Bauhaus took a six-month preliminary course that involved painting and elementary experiments with form, before graduating to three years of workshop training by two masters: one artist, one craftsman. They studied architecture in theory and in practice, working on the actual construction of buildings. The creative scope of the curriculum attracted an extraordinary galaxy of teaching staff. Among the stars were Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Schlemmer, the painter and mystic Johannes Itten, László Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers and Marcel Breuer. Bauhaus students were in day-to-day contact with some of the most important practicing artists and designers of the time.”

• Weimar was in the German state of Thuringia, and the Bauhaus school received state support from the Social Democrat-controlled Thuringian state government.

Vorkurs• From 1919 to 1922 the school was

shaped by the pedagogical and aesthetic ideas of Johannes Itten who taught the preliminary course that was the introduction to the ideas of the Bauhaus

• the modern day "Basic Design" course that has become one of the key foundational courses offered in architectural and design schools across the globe

Johannes Itten (11 November 1888 – 27 May 1967)

• Swiss expressionist painter, designer, teacher, writer and theorist

• master color theorist whose teachings and books on color and design are still used today

Vorkurs• When Itten resigned in late

1922, Itten was replaced by the Hungarian designer László Moholy-Nagy, who rewrote the Vorkurs with a leaning towards the New Objectivity favored by Gropius, which was analogous in some ways to the applied arts side of the debate

Vorkurs

László Moholy-Nagy(July 20, 1895, – Nov 24, 1946)

• a Jewish-Hungarian painter and photographer

• born László Weisz to a Jewish-Hungarian family

• changed his German-Jewish surname to the Magyar surname of his mother's friend, Nagy

• Later, he added “Moholy” to his surname, after the name of the town Mohol in which he grew up. 

• In 1923, replaced Johannes Itten as the instructor of the Vorkras

• ended of the school’s expressionistic leanings and moved it closer towards its original aims as a school of design and industrial integration

• Brought with him new materials (acrylic, resin, plastic) and added interest in photography and film

• one of the Fathers of Light art

• Photograms• Photoplastics• Used the camera

as a tool for design• Used experimental

composition and experimented with point of view

László Moholy-Nagy(July 20, 1895, – Nov 24, 1946)

• Light sculpture and moving sculpture are the components of his Light-Space Modulator (1922–30)

• One of the first light art pieces which also combined kinetic art

László Moholy-Nagy(July 20, 1895, – Nov 24, 1946)

• Believed in clarity of typography with emphasis on legibility

• Invented the typophoto

László Moholy-Nagy(July 20, 1895, – Nov 24, 1946)

• In 1937, at the invitation of Walter Paepcke, the Chairman of the Container Corporation of America, Moholy-Nagy moved to Chicago to become the director of the New Bauhaus

• the school lost the financial backing of its supporters after only a single academic year, and it closed in 1938

• In 1939, Moholy-Nagy opened the School of Design• In 1944, this became the Institute of Design• In 1949 the Institute of Design became a part

of Illinois Institute of Technology and became the first institution in the United States to offer a PhD in design

• resigned from the Bauhaus in 1928

László Moholy-Nagy(July 20, 1895, – Nov 24, 1946)

• From 1923 the school in Weimar came under political pressure from right-wing circles, until on December 26, 1924 it issued a press release accusing the government and setting the closure of the school for the end of March 1925.

Bauhaus at Weimar (1919-1925)

Bauhaus at Dessau (1925-1932)• The Bauhaus was welcomed

by the mayor of Dessau in 1925

• Suitable location because its heavy industry could be used to produce Bauhaus products

• A modern building complex was erected out of concrete glass and steel

• Gropius designed classrooms, dormitories and faculty housing that were grouped in a complete artistic community

The Bauhaus masters on the roof of the Bauhaus building in Dessau. From the left: Josef Albers, Hinnerk Scheper, Georg Muche, László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, Joost Schmidt, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Vassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee,

Lyonel Feininger, Gunta Stölzl and Oskar Schlemme

•  The Dessau years saw a remarkable change in direction for the school. 

• 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

Hannes Meyer (Nov 18, 1889–July 19, 1954)

• Swiss Architect

"1. sex life, 2. sleeping habits, 3. pets, 4. gardening, 5. personal hygiene, 6. weather protection, 7. hygiene in the home, 8. car maintenance, 9. cooking, 10. heating, 11. exposure to the sun, 12. services - these are the only motives when building a house. We examine the daily routine of everyone who lives in the house and this gives us the functional diagram - the functional diagram and the economic programme are the determining principles of the building project."(Meyer, 1928)

• brought his radical functionalist viewpoint  called Die neue Baulehre (the new way to build)

• architecture was an organizational task with no relationship to aesthetics

• buildings should be low cost and designed to fulfill social needs

• also an ardent Marxist

• forced the resignations of Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, and other long-time instructors

• encouraged the formation of a communist student organization

• 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

Marianne Brandt (1 Oct 1893 – 18 June 1983)

• German painter, sculptor, photographer and designer 

• trained as a painter before joining the Weimar Bauhaus in 1923

• student of Hungarian modernist theorist and designer László Moholy-Nagy

• became head of the metal workshop in 1928

• unable to find steady work throughout the period of the Third Reich

• In 1939, became a member of the "Reichskulturkammer," the official Nazi organization of artists

• was never a member of the National Socialist Party

Works• Brandt's designs for

metal ashtrays, tea and coffee services, lamps and other household objects are now recognized as among the best of the Bauhaus

• They were among the few Bauhaus designs to be mass-produced during the interwar period, and several of them are currently available as reproductions

• Beginning in 1926, also produced a body of photomontage work

• often focus on the complex situation of women in the interwar period, a time when they enjoyed new freedoms in work, fashion and sexuality, yet frequently experienced traditional prejudices

• Tempo, Tempo! The Bauhaus Photomontages of Marianne Brandt"

Works

Marcel Lajos Breuer (21 May 1902  – 1 July 1981) 

• architect and furniture designer, was an influential Hungarian-born modernist of Jewish descent

• Studied at Bauhaus and later headed the school's carpentry workshop in the 1920s

• pioneered the design of tubular steel furniture

• Later in his career he would also turn his attention to the creation of innovative and experimental wooden furniture

Works• Wassily Chair• Model B3 chair• Named “Wassily”

by the Italian maufacturer Gavina

• First tubular steel chair

• based on the tubed frame of a bicycle

• Laccio Table• As a apprentice in

1925, conceived as a companion to the Wassily chair

• African Chair• created with Gunta

Stölzl• Made of painted

wood with a colorful textile weave

• relocated to London, at the Isokon company

• designed Long Chair

• experimenting with bent and formed plywood

• A cantilever chair • a chair with no

back legs• relying for support

on the properties of the material

• designed byMart Stam in 1926

• taught at Harvard's architecture school, working

• worked with Walter Gropius• established his own firm in

New York. • The Geller House I of 1945 is

the first to employ Breuer's concept of the 'binuclear' house

Marcel Lajos Breuer (21 May 1902  – 1 July 1981) 

• separate wings for the bedrooms and for the living / dining / kitchen area, separated by an entry hall

• with the distinctive 'butterfly' roof

• two opposing roof surfaces sloping towards the middle, centrally drained

Geller House I

Marcel Lajos Breuer (21 May 1902  – 1 July 1981) 

• Between 1963 and 1964, Breuer began work on what is perhaps his best-known project, the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York City

Bauhaus at Berlin

• The Bauhaus moved to Berlin briefly in 1932

• A rise of the National Socialist Party (Nazis) in Dessau forced the closure of the school in 1933

• The last director was Mies van der Rohe

• In 1931 the Nazis canceled faculty contracts at the Bauhaus

• Mies van der Rohe tried to run theschool from an empty telephone factory in Berlin-Steglitz

• The Nazi Gestapo demanded the removal of “Cultural Bolsheviks” fromthe school and replace them withNazi sympathizers

• Labeled the Bauhaus "un-German" and criticized its modernist styles, deliberately generating public controversy over issues like flat roofs

• A front for communists and social liberals• A number of communist students loyal to

Meyer moved to the Soviet Union when he was fired in 1930

• The Nazi regime was determined to crack down on what it saw as the foreign, probably Jewish influences of "cosmopolitan modernism."

• On August 10, 1933 the faculty voted to close the school.

Demise of the Bauhaus• In 1979, the

Bauhaus Archive, designed by Gropius, was built in West Berlin

• In 1997 the building was placed under historical protection and has been completely renovated under unified Germany.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (March 27, 1886 – August 17, 1969)

• German architect• Tried to eradicate the

subversive elements in the student body

• expelled all of the students and then readmitted only the ones who were perceived as politically acceptable

• “Less is more.”• “God is in the details.”

• settled in Chicago, Illinois where he was appointed as head of the architecture school at Chicago's Armour Institute of Technology (later renamed Illinois Institute of Technology - IIT)

S.R. Crown Hall

860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments

Seagram Building, New York

Herbert Bayer (1900 – 1985)

• Austrian graphic designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, Art Director, environmental & interior designer and Architect

• the last living member of the Bauhaus

• Was trained in Art Nouveou

• In 1925, Gropius commissioned Bayer to design a typeface for all Bauhaus communiqués and Bayer excitedly undertook this task. He took advantage of his views of modern typography to create an "idealist typeface.”

• The result was "universal" - a simple geometric sans-serif font

The New Typography• Serifs are unnecessary• No need for an upper and lower case for

each letter• To simplify typesetting and typewriter

keyboard layout

1. Typography is shaped by functional requirements.

2. The aim of typographic layout is communication (for which it is the graphic medium). Communication must appear in the shortest, simplest, most penetrating form.

3. For typography to serve social ends, its ingredients need internal organization - (ordered content) as well as external organization (the typographic material properly related)

• In 1928, Bayer left the Bauhaus to become art director of Vogue magazine's Berlin office

• In 1937, works of Bayer's were included in the Nazi propaganda exhibition "Degenerate Art", upon which he left Germany

• In 1938 to settle in New York City where he had a long and distinguished career in nearly every aspect of the graphic arts

• In 1946 Hired by industrialist and visionary Walter Paepcke, Bayer moved to Aspen, Colorado as Paepcke promoted skiing as a popular sport. Bayer's architectural work in the town included co-designing the Aspen Institute and restoring the Wheeler Opera House

Jan Tschichold (2 April 1902  – 11 August 1974)

• was a typographer, book designer, teacher and writer

• His artisan background and calligraphic training set him apart from almost all other noted typographers of the time, since they had inevitably trained in architecture or the fine arts

• In October of 1925 Jan Tishcicholdproduced a supplement to theTyoegraphische Mitteilungen calledelementare typographie

• Demonstrated an asymmetrical layout

Jan Tschichold (2 April 1902  – 11 August 1974)

• In his 1928 book, Die Neue Tipographie vigorously defended the new ideas

1. Asymmetrical typography to convey the spirit and visual sensitivity of the time

2. Functional design by the most direct communication in the shortest, most efficient way

3. Rejection of decoration for the rational design

4. Sans serif type5. White space as a structural

interval 6. Use of base grid

Jan Tschichold (2 April 1902  – 11 August 1974)

• Between 1947-1949, lived in England where he oversaw the redesign of 500 paperbacks published by Penguin Books, leaving them with a standardized set of typographic rules, the Penguin Composition Rules.

Jan Tschichold (2 April 1902  – 11 August 1974)

The Penguin Poets redesign by Jan Tschichold (1948)Two early examples of titles from the Penguin Poets series: (left) John Overton’s [?] original design of 1946 and (right) Jan Tschichold’s reformed design of 1951

The Penguin Classics redesign by Jan Tschichold 1949Two early examples of titles from the Penguin Classics series: (left) John Overton’s original design of 1945 and (right) Jan Tschichold’s reformed design of 1949. Both feature circular illustrations (roundels) by William Grimmond.

Jan Tschichold’s redesign for Pelican Books 1949Two examples of early Pelican titles: (left) Edward Young’s original horizontal grid design of 1937 and (right) Jan Tschichold’s reformed design of 1949.

The Penguin Shakespeare redesign by Jan Tschichold 1949The Penguin Shakespeare series: Edward Young’s [?] original design (1938) and Jan Tschichold’s revision (1949)

Penguin’s horizontal grid design and Tschichold’s reformsTwo examples of early Penguin paperback covers: Edward Young’s horizontal grid of the 1930s and Jan Tschichold’s reformed design of the 1950s.