The Bauhaus

Walter Grupious founded the Bauhaus in 1919. It was a school that combined arts and crafts together. It is most known for the way it approached, publicized and taught design. nIt was closed down by Nazis in 1933.






Students came from a range of different social and educational backgrounds. They studied materials, colour theory and more specialized subjects. They also has specialized workshops which included cabinet-making, metal working, weaving,poetry, typography and wall painting.

"Art and Industry" was a slogan the school adapted when Gropius rethought the goals of the Bauhaus in 1923. He emphasized on the importance of designing for mass production.  




Grupious designed the new Bauhas Building when it moved to Weimar, Dessau in 1925. The building became a hallmark of modernist architecture. Some important characteristics of the building were
-steel frame construction
-a glass curtain wall
The best feature was the asymmetrical pinwheel plan that had maximum efficiency space.It shared Grupious distributed studio, classroom and administration.

Marcel Breuer was directing the cabinet-making workshop, which happened to be the most popular. The worked on inconveniencing the essence of furniture and dematerializing conventional forms to their minimal existance.

The metal workshop was also really popular, and in collaboraton with the cabinet-making workshop, it was the most successful workshop in designing prototypes for mass-production. Some of the most important and well-know designers were:
-Marianne Brandt, whom was the first woman in the metal workshop
-Wilhem Wogenfeld
-Christian Dell
Some of their products were even used on campus.

Marianne Brandt Tea-set; silver and ebony; 1924.

Wilhen Wagenfeld multi purpose lamp; 1930.

Christian Dell table lamp; 1926

Architect Hannes Mayer took Gruoious' place as director when he stepped down in 1928. He continued on the last director's steps and emphasized on mass-production and stressed the social function of the design and also architecture. He preached that public good was more important then private luxury.

Architect Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe the took Mayer's place in 1930, when he resigned as Bauhaus director under pressure from the municipal government of the time. Mies kept the same basic ideas of the previous directors. He had to relocate the school to Berlin in 1930 due to the unstable political situation in Germany and also due to financial conditions of the Bauhaus. He ultimately closed it down in 1933.

Many of the main designers of the Bauhaus moved to America where they spread their knowledge and teaching philosophies. They influenced the younger generation of architects and designers. 

-Marcel Breuer and Joseph Albers went to teach at Yale university.

-Walter Grupious went to teach at Harvard.

-Moholy Nagy established the new Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937.