1.
Bauhaus (Building House)
Germany

What was new about the school was its attempt to integrate the artist and the craftsman, to bridge the gap between art and industry. The unity of arts had of course been a central tenet of the late 19th-century Arts and Crafts movement, and the ideals of William Morris influenced Gropius's planning for the school. But the Bauhaus was the antithesis of the Arts and Crafts movement in fundamental ways. No more romance of handmaking in the countryside: its emphasis was urban and technological, and it embraced 20th-century machine culture. Mass production was the god, and the machine aesthetic demanded reduction to essentials, an excision of the sentimental choices and visual distractions that cluttered human lives.
Quote Fiona MacCarthy

2.
Walter Gropius

Henry van de Velde (Belgian), headmaster at the School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar, Germany, was asked to leave the country at the outbreak of World War I. He was replaced by the German architect Walter Gropius who, in 1919, reorganized the school under the name Bauhaus School of Design.

Gropius began his career working under architect Peter Behrens, a founder of the Deutsche WerkbundGropius applied the principles of the Werkbund to the Bauhaus curriculum, in effect creating a laboratory to teach and expand the existing Deutsche Werkbund theories of design.

3.
The Basics Curriculum

"Students at the Bauhaus took a six-month preliminary course that involved painting and elementary experiments with form, before graduating to three years of workshop training by two masters: one artist, one craftsman. They studied architecture in theory and in practice, working on the actual construction of buildings. The creative scope of the curriculum attracted an extraordinary galaxy of teaching staff. Among the stars were Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Schlemmer, the painter and mystic Johannes Itten, László Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers and Marcel Breuer. Bauhaus students were in day-to-day contact with some of the most important practicing artists and designers of the time.

The school, masterfully marketed, acquired a reputation and an influence out of all proportion to its physical reality as a single institution in the German provinces. The name Bauhaus soon became a bogey word to adherents of the bourgeois style that it so vigorously opposed. German mothers told their children: "If you don't behave, I'll send you to the Bauhaus."

But to those who responded to its uncompromising vision of the future, the term Bauhaus had a certain magic. The school came to be known for the marvelous masked balls and kite processions, experimental light and music evenings, and "Triadic" abstract ballets that it organized. These occasions welded students of many ages and nationalities together into a community. The Bauhaus was the beginning of the art school as an alternative way of life. Quote Fiona MacCarthy

5. Bauhaus/ Phase 2
Dessau, Germany

The Bauhaus was welcomed by the mayor of Dessau in 1925. Dessau was suitable location because its heavy industry could be used to produce Bauhaus products. A modern building complex was erected out of concrete glass and steel. Gropius designed classrooms, dormitories and faculty housing that were grouped in a complete artistic community.

In response to the past criticisms of the school's curriculum, Gropius emphasized the merger of the arts and industry in studios which produced textiles, home appliances and accessories and furniture. Gropius and his successor, Hannes Meyer, were removed for their political views, and replaced by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. To eradicate the subversive elements in the student body, Mies expelled all of the students and then readmitted only the ones who were perceived as politically acceptable.

6. Bauhaus/Phase 3
Berlin, Germany

László Moholy-Nagy, Title page of: "Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar 1919-1923", 1923, Letterpress print

7. Bauhaus Typography

At first, practical fields of type application were restricted to small, miscellaneous printed matters. With the appointment of Moholy-Nagy in 1923, came the ideas of "New Typography" to the Bauhaus. He considered typography to be primarily a communications medium, and was concerned with the "clarity of the message in its most emphatic form".

Characteristic for the design were clear, unadorned type prints, the articulation and accentuation of pages through distinct symbols or typographic elements highlighted in color, and finally direct information in a combination of text and photography, for which the name "Typofoto" was created.

8. Herbert Bayer

Austrian Herbert Bayer was trained in the Art Nouveau styles but gained interest in Gropius' Bauhaus-Manifest. He enrolled in the Bauhaus and studied there for four years. After passing his final examination, Bayer was appointed by Gropius to direct the new "Druck und Reklame" (printing & advertising) workshop to open in the new Dessau location.

In 1925, Gropius commissioned Bayer to design a typeface for all Bauhaus communiqués and Bayer excitedly undertook this task. He took advantage of his views of modern typography to create an "idealist typeface." The result was "universal" - a simple geometric sans-serif font. (below).

9. Johannes Itten
Bauhaus Teacher

Itten was a master color theorist whose teachings and books on color and design are still used today.
"Johannes Itten was one of the first people to define and identify strategies for successful color combinations. Through his research he devised seven methodologies for coordinating colors utilizing the hue's contrasting properties. These contrasts add other variations with respect to the intensity of the respective hues; i.e. contrasts may be obtained due to light, moderate, or dark value." (see quote source and more...)

  Women in the Bauhaus

Women were about one quarter of the Bauhaus student body. Most were assigned to the textile shop. however some were able to break out into other areas such as metals and woodworking.

9.
Alma Buscher
Alma Buscher produced children's furniture and toys after she was able to convince Gropius to allow her to transfer to the woodcarving workshop. She gained quick success with her furnishing of a child's room shown at the Bauhaus Exhibition of 1923. She graduated to a successful career in the furniture industry.
(Toy and nursery furniture by Alma Buscher : Bauhaus Museum)

10.
Mariann Brandt
(Photo: Bauhaus Museum)

Mariann Brandt was a gifted metalsmith who became the temporary director of the metal shops when Maholy-Nagy left the Bauhaus in 1928. From the mid-1920's and 1930's she experimented in photomontage.


(Photo: Design Addict)