The Bauhaus school was established in 1919 in Dessau, Germany by a group
of architects, engineers, and artists led by Walter Gropius. The ideals of this
group were social and political as well as aesthetic. They sought solutions for
the problems faced by the working classes in the depression years of Post World
War I Germany. Their concerns included urban planning, housing, and the
development of high-quality, utilitarian mass production of consumer goods.
A unique feature of their program was the melding of handicraft and industrial
production methods. Crafts were thought to be the necessary first step in the
training of engineers, architects and industrial designers. In this they
differed from the theoreticians of the Arts and Crafts movement, who resisted
the use of industrial methods and materials; yet the Bauhaus designers shared
the Arts and Crafts veneration of the hand crafts. All engineering and design
students took craft courses as well as painting, drawing, and theoretical
studies in design and color.
The design style of the Bauhaus group owed a great deal to the de Stijl group, some of whom joined the school as teachers. The ideal of form following function was also emphasized. At the Bauhaus this concept was expressed in spare, rectilinear forms in which honest use of materials was stressed- in architecture, for example, the structural components of steel, glass, concrete, and other industrial materials were to be used directly and honestly, without imitative form.
The Bauhaus style and teaching methods would become very influential in the teaching of design throughout Europe and the United States, since the teachers emigrated to other universities and design schools in other countries when the Bauhaus was closed by Hitler in 1933. By the outbreak of World War II most were in the United States teaching in major institutions, where they would influence a whole generation of artists and designers. To this day, Bauhaus methods strongly influence the teaching of design in many schools.
Among the most important figures in the Bauhaus school are the architects
Walter Gropius, designer of the Pan Am Building in New York; Mies van der Rohe,
who designed the modernist classic, the Barcelona chair, and a number of
important buildings as well. Among the artists associated with the Bauhaus are
Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Joseph Albers, and Johannes Itten, all of whom
published and taught their philosophies of art and design.
Following World War II the style broadened into what became known as the
international style, or modern style. The pure form and honest use of materials
continued to define architecture and interior design following World War II.
However, some designers began to explore the broader structural design
potential of industrial materials, and broke with the strict rectilinear forms
of the pre-war era.
Among the architects associated with the international style are Le Corbusier,
Eero Saarinen, and Marcel Breuer.
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