2. BIRTH OF BAUHAUS
• After the First World War a state of
widespread uncertainty once more
prevailed .
• Then started the expressionist
movement which could not provide
any service to architecture.
• This was the situation into which the
Bauhaus came at its birth.
• From the beginning it set itself to
unite art and industrial life to find the
keynote for a sound contemporary
architecture.
3. INTRODUCTION
• The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 by an
architect named Walter Gropius. Gropius
came from the Werkbund movement.
• The Bauhaus was founded by combining of
the Weimar Art Academy, and the Weimar Arts
and Crafts School.
• Gropiu‘s desire was to make modern artists
familiar with science and economics, that
began to
“ unite creative imagination with a practical
knowledge of craftsmanship, and thus to
develop a new sense of functional design.”
4. IDEOLOGIES
The school had three aims at its
inception
• Rescue all of the arts from the isolation in
which each then found itself.
• The school set out to elevate the status of
crafts, chairs, lamps, teapots, etc., to the
same level enjoyed by fine arts, painting,
sculpting, etc.
• To maintain contact with the leaders of
industry and craft in an attempt to
eventually gain independence from
government support by selling designs to
industry.
Feininger : Cathedral of
the Future
5. BAUHAUS AT PLACES
• The first phase of the Bauhaus was in
Weimar. It was marked by an idealistic
attempt to remove the decadent from
Bolshevistic art .
• The Dessau phase is one of “quasi-
scientific ideas gradually replaced
Romantic notions of artistic self-
expression and brought about important
changes in the school's curriculum and
teaching methods”.
• The locations are not significant for
change of place, but modification of
philosophy. Pure idealism adopted
realism.
8. ABOUT THE BUILDING
• One of the greatest achievements
for the Bauhaus, and in particular
Gropius, were the buildings at
Dessau (built 1925-26)
• The Bauhaus at Dessau included
three main wings; school of arts and
crafts; the workshops; and
students' hostel.
• Much of the building was faced with
glass. There were several bridges
which connected the different
sections of the complex.
10. BAUHAUS PEOPLE
• Walter Gropius was the founder of
the Bauhaus School in Dessau. He
became Chair of the Graduate
School of Design at Harvard
University in 1937.
• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was the
Director of Bauhaus from 1930
until the school's closing in 1933.
In 1938 he became Director of
Architecture at the Illinois Institute
of Technology.
The Museum of Modern Art, New
York (MoMA), houses 20,000 of
van der Rohe's drawings
11. • Laszlo Moholy - Nagy took over the
preliminary basic course in 1923 after Itten
left. He was interested in typography,
photography and cinema.
He was most important to the
development of visual communications. He
was one of the pioneers of camera-less
photography.
He eventually founded the Institute of
Design in Chicago, later called the Illinois
Institute of Design.
• After completing his studies at the
Bauhaus Marcel Breuer worked in an
architects office. After a year he was
appointed as head of the carpentry
workshop at the Bauhaus. Breuer was
given the title of 'young master'.
Breuer helped to develop modular or unit
construction. This is the combination of
standardised units to form a technically
simple but functional complete unit.
12. • Herbert Bayer's responsibility at the
Bauhaus included typography and
advertising techniques.
Bayer also set up Bauhaus design
exhibitions. He later went to America,
where he developed exhibition
techniques and commercial art. Major
department stores, as well as advertising
agencies employed him as an art
consultant.
• Johannes Itten was initially responsible
for teaching the preliminary 'basic' course.
However, his philosophical perspective
did not suite the Bauhaus.
He said of color, "He who wants to
become a master of color must see, feel,
and experience each individual color in
its many endless combinations with all
other colors. Colors must have a mystical
capacity for spiritual expression, without
being tied to objects."
13. WORKSHOP
• Practical work in the workshops was the core training element
at the Bauhaus.
• Each of the workshops had two heads throughout the Weimar
years. A master of form, an artist responsible for the design
and aesthetic aspect of work, always had at his side a master of
crafts, a craftsman who passed on technical skills and abilities.
• A limited company, Bauhaus GmbH, was formed in 1925 to sell
the products developed at the Bauhaus.
• Furniture and other everyday objects were designed for mass
production to enable large sections of the population to buy
quality items at prices they could afford.
• The forms and significance of workshop activities declined
considerably under the third Bauhaus director, Mies van der
Rohe, who subordinated them to architecture employing the
designs and materials of the time.
14. BAUHAUS PRODUCTS
• The workshops were functional, and
a corporation was created to handle
the products they produced
• The Bauhaus at Dessau included;
metal, furniture, weaving,
typography, photography, wall-
painting and sculpture workshops
as well as departments for
architecture, exhibition techniques
and graphic design.
• The workshops utilized new
techniques and materials of mass
production in their creations.
• Among the many items it produced,
was the first tubular chair designed
by Marcel Breuer.
Plywood Chair
Lounge Chair
Tubular Chair
15. INFLUENCE OF BAUHAUS
• The Bauhaus influenced Later art movements such as Abstract
Expressionist and Op-Art .
• Abstract Expressionist's theme revolved around the color theories
which evolved from the Bauhaus classes. The Hard-Edge and Minimal
movements of the Abstract Expressionists explored color through clean,
clear edges of solid color.
• Op-Art is optical art, which tricks the retina to create the illusion of
movement. Op-Art is widely used in modern commercial graphic design.
• The effects of the Bauhaus stretches beyond our furniture and light
fixtures, into the realms of architecture, theater, and typography, where
the designs and style of the Bauhaus are still spoken of today.
• The practical innovations developed by the Bauhaus have profoundly
effected designs favored by industry as shown by the desks and chairs
that fill offices, lobbies, and lounges across America .
16. END AND THE NEW BEGNNING
OF BAUHAUS
• The Bauhaus school existed not even 15 years before it was shut
down by the Nazis. Most of the artists went to the US and there they
had great success.
• Although the Bauhaus was a product of a social ideology, these
aspects became in America less and less important and in the end the
Bauhaus ideas became fully stripped of their ideological guise.
• The new Bauhaus was founded in 1937 in Chicago by master Laszlo
Moholy-Nagy.
• The focus on natural and human sciences was increased . Training in
mechanical techniques was more sophisticated than it had been in
Germany.
• Bauhaus is still part of the Illinois Institute of Technology, and rates as
a respected and professionally oriented school of design till today.
17. BIBLIOGRAPHY
• Space, Time and Architecture, Harvard (Pg.485-497)
• Modern Architecture, Kenneth Frampton (Pg. 123)
• Architecture Today, James Steele (Pg.12-14,181,254,255,432,433)
• Observations of Young Architects
• Encyclopedia World Architecture
• http://people.ucsc.edu/~gflores/bauhaus/b1.html
• http://architecture.about.com/library/blgloss-bauhaus.htm
• http://www.chrissnider.com/academic/bauhaus/front.html
