The Bauhaus

The Bauhaus

Das Staatliche Bauhaus, commonly referred to as the Bauhaus, began in 1906 as the Weimar School of Arts and Crafts in Germany. In 1919, Walter Gropius(1883-1969), a German architect was appointed director of the school and gave it, its new name. His architectural style echoed a symmetrical and simplistic tone, and breaking away from historically inspired architecture. Gropius wished to train and unify artists, architects, and designers, and to harmonize art and industry. With the Industrial Revolution burgeoning with new technological advances, the arts of the humanities were forced to compete with machine tools being designed to make other machines. Bauhaus students were thoroughly taught about industry and mass production along side pottery and carpentry.
Walter Gropius' Bauhaus Manifesto of the Staatliche Bauhaus in Weimar, he expresses that designers should physically make again and that the creative imagination is born out of a marriage of craft and art. He bluntly states, “. . we all must turn to the crafts! Art is not a profession. There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman.” These idealistic views drove the Bauhaus toward an equal and interdisciplinary way of creating, and into questioning the norms of social issues like class lines. The basis of the manifesto lies in the beginning and the end when Gropius speaks of building as the most pure and foundational form of visual cultural, creation.
In 1924, the Bauhaus moved north to Dessau, into a newly designed Gropius building, as a result of a hostile new government. Four years later, Walter Gropius resigned and made way for Hannes Mayer (1889-1954), who in 1930, was quickly pushed out because of his vocal Marxist beliefs. The third director of Bauhaus was Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), a German-American architect. In 1933, under pressure from the Nazi regime, the Bauhaus, the School of Building, was dissolved.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe sought to establish a new kind of architectural style, a named style that would hold up on it's own, untied to history and tradition. His work valued the aesthetics of a minimal framework, open space, and efficient practicality. He is the father of the popular saying, “less is more”, which was a building arrangement tactic of his, in order to create a simplistic impression. This included an abandonment of ornament and a simple functionality, influenced by the Russian Constructivist movement.

Le Corbusier, born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, was a Swiss-French architect, unban planner, designer, writer, and painter. He was also one of the Pioneers of the International Style, which grew from the aesthetic of Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. Le Corbusier too great strives to design living spaces that welcomed and accommodated urban growth while maintaining better living conditions. His economic and open designs took advantage of the building materials' ability to act in multiple ways, materials like reinforced concrete and structural steel.
Le Corbusier said, “Modern life demands, and is waiting for, a new kind of plan, both for the house and the city,”(Vers une architecture, 1923).

Gerritt Rietveld was a Dutch furniture designer and architect who came to the De Stijl movement as a cabinet maker and became famous for the dramatic planes in his Red and Blue Chair, 1917, and the Schroder House, 1924. With several colleagues, Rietveld also designed a building for the Kunsnijverheidsschool, which was established in 1924, and renamed the Gerritt Rietveld Academie in 1968, shortly after his death.
The Rietveld Academie, still in operation today, explains its educational goals are, “to educate the individual personality of each student, to extend his/her potential into a versatile practi
Black Mountain College
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Another art and craft centered school, in the United States, was the Black Mountain College, founded in 1933, near Asheville, North Carolina. John A. Rice, the founder, based his ideas of what education should be on John Dewey's progressive education ideals, with the arts playing a central role in the learning experience. The informal and collaborative atmosphere of this school was well liked by many artists, such as Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage and Buckminster Fuller, many of whom were seeking a refuge for their artistic expressions, after being driven from Europe. Also, Albert Einstein found a home in this communal and secluded school, serving on the board of directors for some time.