THE BAUHAUS / Overview I / Lxxii

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GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / THE BAUHAUS / Overview i / lxxii

The Bauhaus

1 The Bauhaus 1

2 German workshops 5

3 The Weimar Location 23

4 The Dessau Location 44

5 New Faculty 53

6 The Epoch Closes 66

7 Conclusion 70

The Bauhaus

1919–1933

A German design school where ideas from all advanced art and design movements were explored, combined, and applied to the problems of functional design and machine production.

The Bauhaus

The name translated into The House of Construction or School of Building.

• Weimar • Dessau • Berlin 1919–1925 1925–1932 1932–1933

1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933

Weimar Dessau Berlin

Walter Gropius Hannes Meyer Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

1919–1933 The Bauhaus

Twentieth-century furniture, architecture, product design, and graphics were shaped by the work of its faculty and students, and a modern design aesthetic emerged.

– MEGGS

1919–1933 The Bauhaus

Ideas from all advanced art and design movements were explored, combined, and applied to the problems of functional design and machine production.

• The Arts & Crafts: Applied arts, craftsmanship, workshops, apprenticeship • Art Nouveau: Removal of ornament, application of form • Futurism: Typographic freedom • Dadaism: Wit, spontaneity, theoretical exploration • Constructivism: Design for the greater good • De Stijl: Reduction, simplification, refinement

German workshops

1899–1925

Prior to its industrial philosophy, the fundamental structure for the Bauhaus was modeled after the Deutcher Werkbund, an Arts & Crafts workshop in Weimar, Germany.

1899–1914 The Deutscher Werkbund

• German association of artists, architects, designers and industrialists • Arts & Crafts guild • Series of workshops • Joined craft and industry • Incluced Eliel Saarinen, Mies van der Rohe, among others

1899–1914 The Deutscher Werkbund

• Exhibition of 1914 • Cologne, Germany • Featured works by Henri van de Velde, Peter Behrens, and Walter Gropius • Scheduled to last from May–October • Closed in August in response to outbreak of WWI • Influenced theThe Weimar Arts and Crafts School

1899–1914 The Deutscher Werkbund

1910–1914 The Weimar Arts and Crafts School

• Originally called the Weimar Saxon-Grand Ducal Art School • The building existed since 1860 in varying capacities • In 1904 occupied a building designed by Henry van de Velde • Reorganized in 1910 to join three other schools into one

1910–1914 The Weimar Arts and Crafts School

• Modelled after the earlier Deutsche Werkbund • Stained glass, wood, and metal workshops • Medieval Bauhütte: master, journeyman, and apprentice

1910–1914 The Weimar Arts and Crafts School

• Arts & Crafts origins • Unity of artists and craftsmen to build for the future • Expressionist leanings at turn of century • Utopian desire to create a new spiritual society

1910–1914 The Weimar Arts and Crafts School

• Henry van de Velde, Director • Belgian Art Nouveau architect • Designed the building at the turn of the century • Built in two separate efforts: 1904 & 1911

1914 The Weimar Arts and Crafts School

• Henry van de Velde, Director • Forced to resigns in light of WWI • Returns to Belgium, 1914 • Closed duration of WWI • Van de Velde recommneds Walter Gropius, Hermann Obrist, and August Endell as successors • Four year delay by WWI

1883–1969 Walter Gropius

• Grand Ducal School of Arts and Crafts merges with neighboring Weimar Academy of Fine Arts • Walter Gropius, architect, is appointed as next Director to succeed van de Velde in 1918

1883–1969 Walter Gropius

• 3 year assistantship with Peter Behrens, 1907–1910 • Together they used modern materials like glass and steel in new ways • Gropius introduces to modernism to factory design

© KEVIN WOODLAND, 2015 STUDIO OF PETER BEHRENS: MIES VAN DER ROHE, ADOLF MEYER, HERTWIG, WEYRATHER, KRÄMER, WALTER GROPIUS, 1908 GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / THE BAUHAUS / German workshops 19 / 72

For the first time a complete facade is conceived in glass. The supporting piers are reduced to narrow mullions of brick.

—NIKOLAUS PEVSNER, PIONEERS OF MODERN DESIGN

1883–1969 Walter Gropius

• Factory design • Fagus factory in Berlin, 1911

... The corners are left without any support, yielding an unprecedented sense of openness and continuity between inside and out. ...

—NIKOLAUS PEVSNER, PIONEERS OF MODERN DESIGN

... Another exceedingly important quality of Gropius’s building is that, thanks to the large expanses of clear glass, the usual hard separation of exterior and interior is annihilated.

—NIKOLAUS PEVSNER, PIONEERS OF MODERN DESIGN

The role of the walls becomes restricted to that of mere screens stretched between the upright columns of the framework to keep out rain, cold and noise.

–WALTER GROPIUS

The Weimar Location

1919–1925

Gropius begins to shape the philosophy of the school. Expressionist origins slowly progress towards a more open, rational, and modern point of view.