Material Training The Bauhaus obsession with materiality

The Bauhaus ambitiously sought to pioneer a radically integrated daily environment where design touched everything, from a teaspoon to a city, for the betterment of all. Key to the school’s success and enduring legacy may perhaps be found in its obsession with materiality, and its unwavering commitment to material innovation. For students, this attention to materiality began immediately upon enrolment, with the school’s now legendary preliminary course – the Vorkurs.

At the core of the preliminary training given to Bauhaus students lay Josef Albers, a former elementary-school teacher. As from autumn 1923 Albers taught the first semester of the Vorkurs, consisting of 18 lessons a week, while László MoholyNagy, colleague and artist, taught the second semester (8 lessons a week). Albers’ timetable included visits to craftsmen and factories. Without machines, and using the simplest, most conventional tools, pupils designed containers, toys and small utensils, at first using just one material and later in combinations. In this way students familiarized themselves with the inherent properties of each material and the basic rules of design.

When Moholy-Nagy left the Bauhaus in 1928, Albers took over the teaching of the entire Vorkurs, which he then ran until the school’s closure in 1933. Albers subsequently systematised the

Vorkurs in a completely new way, as can be seen in his approach to material studies. From 1927 onwards students were no longer permitted to work with materials at random, but instead had to progress through glass, paper and metal in strict order. They worked solely with glass in the first month and paper in the second, while in the third month they were allowed to use two materials which their studies had shown to be related. Not until the fourth month were students free to choose their own materials.

Albers observed: ‘Materials must be worked in such a way that there is no wastage: the chief principle is economy. The final form arises from the tensions of cut and folded material.’

Albers’ approach to materiality had a particular and profound influence on many students and their subsequent work. The painter Hannes Beckmann described his first lesson with Albers thus:

“I can still clearly remember my first day at the school. Josef Albers entered the room with a bundle of newspapers under one arm, which he gave out to the students. He then turned to us with roughly the following words: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are poor, not rich. We cannot afford to waste either time or materials. We must make the best out of the worst. Every work of art starts from a specific material, and we must therefore first study how that material is constituted. To this end, we shall first simply experiment - without trying to produce anything. For the present we shall focus on skill, not beauty. The complexity of the form is dependent upon the material with which we are working. Bear in mind that you often achieve more by doing less. Our studies should inspire constructive thinking. Have I made myself clear? I would now like you to take the newspaper you have just been given and make something out of it which is more than it is now. I would also like you to respect the material, to employ it in a meaningful way and thereby consider its characteristic qualities. If you can do so without the aid of knives, scissors or glue, so much the better. Good luck!”. Hours later he returned, and had us lay out the results of our efforts on the floor. There were masks, boats, castles, airplanes, animals and numerous cleverly devised little figures. He dismissed it all as childish rubbish and said that a lot of it would have been better made using other materials. He then picked out one, very simple-looking piece of work by a young Hungarian architect. He had done nothing more than fold the material from top to bottom so that it stood up like a pair of wings. Josef Albers now explained how well the material had been understood, how well it had been used and how folding was a particularly appropriate process to apply to paper since it made what was such a soft material rigid, indeed so rigid that it could be stood on its narrowest point - its edge. He also explained how a newspaper lying on a table has only one visually active side, the rest being invisible. But with the paper standing up, both sides had become visually active. The paper had thus lost its boring exterior, its tired appearance. The preliminary course was like group therapy.

By comparing all the solutions found by the other students, we quickly learned the most worthwhile way to solve a task. And we learned to criticize ourselves; that was considered more important than criticizing others. The “brainwashing” which we thus underwent in the preliminary course undoubtedly taught us to think more clearly.’

It is therefore with this understanding of materiality, from the preliminary course, that students progressed on to more specialised disciplines and workshops where they applied their learning to their chosen material in creative and innovative ways. Indeed, it is with this same respect for and interrogation of materials that head of carpentry, Marcel Breuer, and textile student, Margaretha Reichardt, redefined the material composition of the classic club chair.