Bauhaus
Bauhaus
Bauhaus (‘The Art of Building’)
was the first school to specialise in art and design. The idea was to create a
new way of training people so that more products can be produced and therefore
more product could be sold, which would increase the popularity of items. They
understood good design and felt that their creations should be functional;
practicality should come before decoration.
‘Form Follows Function’. Due to this influence, simple shapes like the
triangle, circle and square were mostly used in Bauhaus designs.
Before the Bauhaus, to work in
the design industry, you had to pass a written examination. Women were placed
within the textile and weaving sector or sometimes the metal workshop as these
were thought of as the best roles for women and inferior to other roles.
However, the Bauhaus didn’t believe that one subject was more important than
another so they wanted to change this idea. They wanted to build schools where
everyone worked alongside one another and would be able to experiment, explore
and test their designs; mistakes didn’t matter.
Within this school, there was accommodation, theatres, no exams and
resembled what we now know as a University.
Walter Gropius (1883-1969) was an architect and the founder of the
Bauhaus. He wanted to bring art and the industry together. After World War 1,
in Germany, the King was abducted and so Germany became a Republic. The Bauhaus
ran from 1919 to 1933 in 3 different sites in Germany:
- Weimar (1919-1925)
- Dessau
(1925-1932)
- Berlin
(1932-1933)
The initial move from Weimar to
Dessau was because Gropius fell out with the local council of Weimar due to
them being very right winged politically. The local council was taken over by
Nazi’s who were against the Bauhaus as many of their teachers were Jewish.
Their ideas resulted in unemployment and inflation which created poor living
standards, so the Bauhaus was moved to a more industrial town of Dessau which
was full of new ideas. Again in 1932,
Dessau became under the control of the Nazis and the Bauhaus moved to Berlin
but only for a short period of time before being under pressure by the Nazi’s
to close down.
Influences
- Modernism
- English
Art & Crafts Movement
- Constructivism
Some examples of work
produced by Bauhaus is the Cantilever Chair which was cheap, had easy storage
(as it could be stacked), was light weight, used less materials and was quicker
to produce. Also, in typography, ‘Sans Serif’ (without detail) was designed to
be clear and clean and easy to read. It was also easier to fit the type on a
page which meant it used less space and so was cheaper to print.
Artists involved with the Bauhaus:
- Josef
Albers
- Hinnerk
Scheper
- Gorge
Muche
- Laszlo
Moholy Nagy
- Wassily
Kandinsky
- Paul
Klee
- Herbert
Bayer
- Joost
Schmidt
The Bauhaus building had glass walls which let in lots of
light and cut costs, as well as allowing there to be huge studios within.