Essay, Research Paper: The Bauhaus Notes

Architecturearchitecture
When Walter Gropius resigned as the head of the Bauhaus in 1930, Ludwig
Mies Van Der Rohe (1886-1969) became its director, moving it to Berlin
before political pressures forced it to close in 1933. In his architecture
and furniture he made a clear and elegant statement of the International
Style, so much so that his work had enormous influence on modern
architecture. Taking his motto "less is more" and calling his architecture
"skin and bones," his aesthetic was already fully formed in the model for
a glass skyscraper office building he concieved in 1921.
Working with glass provided him with new freedom and many new
possiblities. In the glass model, three irreguarly shaped towers flow
outward from a central court. The perimeter walls are wholly transparent,
the regular horizontal patterning of the cantilevered floor panes and
their thin vertical supporting elements. The weblike delicacy of the lines
of the glass model, its radiance, and the illusion of movement created by
reflection and by light changes seen through it prefigure many of the
glass skyscrapers of major cities throughout the world.
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Architecture architecture
Georg Muche's Haus am Horn, the model house for the Bauhaus exibition in
1923, was the first house he had ever designed. It is an extraordinary
little Modernist Villa, classical in its own way. As the floor plan shows,
it was designed for a single family with young children and no servants.
The living room stands at the centre of the house, surrounded by all the
other, much smaller rooms and lit by clerestory windows above. The
surrounding rooms are linked in a logical way for middle-class households
(the man's and the woman's rooms both lead into the bathroom, the womans
room connects with the nursery and so on).
Muche became as fascinated by the idea of low cost, quick assembly
prefabricated buildings as Gropius and Meyer. In 1925 they designed a
house that could be assembled simply from steel panels.
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Architecturearchitecture
When Walter Gropius resigned as the head of the Bauhaus in 1930, Ludwig
Mies Van Der Rohe (1886-1969) became its director, moving it to Berlin
before political pressures forced it to close in 1933. In his architecture
and furniture he made a clear and elegant statement of the International
Style, so much so that his work had enormous influence on modern
architecture. Taking his motto "less is more" and calling his architecture
"skin and bones," his aesthetic was already fully formed in the model for
a glass skyscraper office building he concieved in 1921.
Working with glass provided him with new freedom and many new
possiblities. In the glass model, three irreguarly shaped towers flow
outward from a central court. The perimeter walls are wholly transparent,
the regular horizontal patterning of the cantilevered floor panes and
their thin vertical supporting elements. The weblike delicacy of the lines
of the glass model, its radiance, and the illusion of movement created by
reflection and by light changes seen through it prefigure many of the
glass skyscrapers of major cities throughout the world.
]previous[ ]next[
Architecturearchitecture

]g a l l e r y[ It was clear from Gropius's Manifesto that the ultimate
aim of the Bauhaus was architecture; the very name Bauhaus suggests it
most strongly. Each of the school's three directors, Gropius, Meyer and
Van Der Rohe, were above all an architect and, rightly or wrongly, the
Bauhaus has become strongly identified with the architectural approach
that has variously been called Modernism, The Modern Movement or the
International Style.
The debate surrounding Modernism or the new architecture was carried on in
terms heavy with moral conotations: truth, purity and honesty. Democracy
even entered into it with the attempt to suppress the predominance of one
face of the building in favor of buildings that would only be appreciated
by walking around or through them.
The structure of the building had to be expressed clearly by its outward
appearance. In formal terms, the horizontal was emphasised rather than the
imposing verticals of 19th Century public buildings; flat planes were
interlocked at right angles and surfaces were rendered white to symbolize
purity and clarity. One of the most controversial elements in the german
context was the use of the flat roof; the pitched roof was seen in
conservative circles as inalienably Germanic.
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Bauhausbauhaus
The Bauhaus is not a style; it is a collection of attitudes. The Bauhaus
was founded in Weimar Germany in 1919 by the architect [Walter Gropius].
The Bauhaus Manifesto was to unite the teaching of fine art, applied art
and architecture in order to educate creative people capable of large
sacale collaborative projects or "total works of art". The word Bauhaus is
derived from the "hausbau" meaning construction. Bauhaus implies not only
building and construction but also reconstruction. Above all, the Bauhaus
is identified with functionalism, which is now seen as the eradication of
ornament in favour of the austere beauty of the industrial Aesthetic.
The students of the Bauhaus took part in the designing of buildings and
fittings. They were encouraged to use their imagination and to experiment
boldly yet never to lose sight of the purpose which their designs should
serve. It was at this school that tubular steel chairs and similar
furnishings of our daily use were invented.
The theories for which the Bauhaus stood for are sometimes condensed in
the slogan of "functionalism" the belief that if something is only
designed to fit its purpose we can let beauty look after itself. There is
certainly much truth in this belief. But like all slogans it really rests
on an oversimplification. The best works of this style are beautiful not
only because they happen to fit the function for which they are built but
because they were designed by men of tact and taste who knew how to make
an object or building fit for its purpose and yet right for the eye.
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Bauhausfurniture

]g a l l e r y[ Bauhaus furniture design was based on the premise that it
was necessary to develop new and radically different forms for the pieces
of furniture that were to be accepted as the basis of the modern home.
Traditional furniture types -the heavy armchair, the mahogany armoire and
the bourgeois love of ornamentation were rejected.
The functionalist approach was enthusiastically embraced by the carpentry
workshop, as was Gropius's belief that peoples needs were largely
identical. It was therefore the workshops task to provide for those needs
in the most definitive and economic way.
Given the shortage of housing space in and the mid 1920s fashion for
health and hygiene, the goal was to create lightweight, adaptable,
multi-purpose furniture in clean, hard materials, soft upholstery was
thought to harbour dust and mites.
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Bauhausfurniture
Peter Bucking used wood for this lightweight collapsable armchair in
1928.
This chair epitomises the Bauhaus aesthetic lightweight, low cost
adaptable furniture for the workers housing for which it was premium. The
advantage of this chair was that it could be stored and not seen, avoiding
the whole aspect of clutter and maximising the use of household space.
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Bauhausfurniture
When Hannes Meyer became director in 1928, and Breuer was succeeded as
leader of the furniture workshop first by Josef Albers and then by Alfred
Arndt, the workshops priorities were realigned. The aim was now to create
low-cost multi-purpose, standard furniture. A number of ingenious folding
or adjustable work chairs were designed, often using tubular steel and
plywood in conjunction. Alfred Arndts chair 1929-30 which is sometimes
attributed to Breuer, folds completely flat so that it can fold up against
a wall.
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Bibliography


The Bauhaus School


Word Count: 1269