3191038 | Bauhaus | still alive

BAUHAUS

INTRODUCTION Why does he still inspire artists and designers? In my publication I will try to answer this question. In the first part I will describe the school’s history and main issues. Why Bauhaus has become special In the second part I will compare projects from the past with current examples from design. In the third part I will summarize my thoughts and show some examples of projects that go beyond the current graphic solutions. They are innovative and experimental, just as the Bauhaus style was once innovative.

Walter Gropius said: „Architects, sculptors, painters - we all need to return to the craft. Art is not a profession, there is no fundamental difference between an artist and a craftsman.

The artistis an inspired craftsman.„ The Staatliches Bauhaus, commonly known as the Bauhaus (German: „building house”), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts. The school became famous for its approach to design, which attempted to unify the principles of mass production with individual artistic vision and strove to combine aesthetics with everyday function.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS The publication is divided into three parts. The first tells the story and the most important issues that took place in the Bauhaus. The second part divided into subgroups A and B relates to design from Bauhaus and design now inspired by Bauhaus. The third part contains a summary and recent examples that are looking ahead.

INTRODUCTION

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HISTORY

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PAST DESIGN

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PRESENT DESIGN

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CONCLUSION

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Bauhaus style in the Present

Conclusion

HISTORY The Bauhaus, simply put, was a German school of art and design that opened in 1919 and closed in 1933. It was also very much more than that. It was the most influential and famous design school that has ever existed. It defined an epoch.

It became the pre-eminent emblem of modern architecture and design. The name has become an adjective as well as a noun – Bauhaus style, Bauhaus look. And now it is coming up for the centenary of its founding, which shows both that what was called the “modern movement” is now part of history and that its influence is very much still around us.

Bauhaus—literally translated to “con-

Weimar, aka State Bauhaus in Weimar, was where Gropius laid the groundwork for Bauhaus to come; it’s where he established ideals that would be considered visionary for the time. Art, according to his manifesto and the program, should serve a social role and there should no longer be a division of craft-based disciplines. At Weimar, the “stage workshop” was an important part of the education. It was directed by Lothar Schreyer from 1921 to 1923 and then by Oskar Schlemmer from 1923 to 1925. It brought together visual and performing arts and stressed an interdisciplinary approach.

its enduring influence on modern and

Berlin was the last phase of Bauhaus. Due to mounting pressures from the Nazis and cutbacks in funding, there was limited work done during this time. The move to Berlin happened after the closure of Dessau, and Bauhaus masters and students reconvened in October 1932 out of an abandoned telephone factory. By April 11, 1933, however, the premises were searched and closed by the police and SA. 6

school of the arts in the early 20th century.

Founded by Walter Gropius, the school eventually morphed into its own modern art movement characterized by its unique approach to architecture and design.

Today, Bauhaus is renowned for both its unique aesthetic that inventively combines the fine arts with arts and crafts as well as contemporary art.

Students in a workshop at the Bauhaus Dessau, photographer unknown (possibly Lotte Gerson-Collein). Photographs of Bauhaus Students, Teachers, and Exhibits, 1919–1933. The Getty Research Institute

https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/bauhaus/new_artist/history/masters_apprentices/ https://mymodernmet.com/what-is-bauhaus-art-movement/

Dessau was considered the hotspot in the heyday of Bauhaus. It arose after the politically motivated close of Weimar. During this time, it set forth on the path of designing new industrial products for mass consumption.

(Most of the products and designs that are well known today came from Dessau.) It was also here that the famous Bauhaus Building was planned and built by Gropius. This iteration of Bauhaus was dissolved on September 30, 1932.

struction house”—originated as a German

Dessau, Germany

https://hojemacau.com.mo/2019/04/06/weimar-foi-o-berco-da-bauhaus-e-inaugura-hoje-novo-museu-dedicado-ao-movimento/

Weimar, Germany

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manifesto

The Bauhaus was established in 1919 in Weimar as a new model of a design school in the imme­diate aftermath of the First World War and the German Revolution. It brought together a younger generation of students and teachers who rejected the nationalistic, militaristic, and authoritarian past and insisted on the social relevance of the arts in an emerging democratic society.

Helping to shape this radical imagina­tion for new practices, new formsoflearning,andnewlifestyleswastheideathattheindivid­ual and the material environment should be freed from all that was unnecessary and that the relationship between the arts, craft, design, and the building should be rethought.

Bauhaus Manifesto published by Walter Gropius. This drew on radical movements that wanted to overcome the academic art institution, and which championed the social value of craft as a way to redress the aliena­ tion of nineteenth­century industrial capitalism. The ultimate goal of all art is the building! The ornamentation of the building was once the main purpose of the visual arts, and they were considered indispensable parts of the great building. Today, they exist in complacent isolation, from which they can only be salvaged by the purposeful and cooperative endeavours of all artisans. Architects, painters and sculptors must learn a new way of seeing and understanding the composite character of the building, both as a totality and in terms of its parts. Their work will then re-imbue itself with the spirit of architecture, which it lost in salon art. The art schools of old were incapable of producing this unity—and how could they, for art may not be taught. They must return to the workshop. This world of mere drawing and painting of draughtsmen and applied artists must at long last become a world that builds. When a young person who senses within himself a love for creative endeavour begins his career, as in the past, by learning a trade, the unproductive “artist” will no longer be condemned to the imperfect practice of art because his skill is now preserved in craftsmanship, where he may achieve excellence.

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Bauhaus Manifesto published by Walter Gropius. This drew on radical movements that wanted to overcome the academic art institution, and which championed the social value of craft as a way to redress the aliena­tion of nineteenth­century industrial capitalism.

http://chrismullaney.com.au/architecture/bauhaus-manifesto-walter-gropius//

HISTORY

HISTORY

manifesto

artist and craftsman

Architects, sculptors, painters—we all must return to craftsmanship! For there is no such thing as “art by profession.”

There is no essential difference between the artist and the artisan. The artist is an exalted artisan. Merciful heaven, in rare moments of illumination beyond man’s will, may allow art to blossom from the work of his hand, but the foundations of proficiency are indispensable to every artist. This is the original source of creative design.

Every new student comes to us burdened with the accumulated sum of messages that he must get rid of before he reaches the ability to perceive and knowledge that will be his own.

So let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen, free of the divisive class pretensions that endeavoured to raise a prideful barrier between craftsmen and artists! Let us strive for, conceive and create the new building of the future that will unite every discipline, architecture and sculpture and painting, and which will one day rise heavenwards from the million hands of craftsmen as a clear symbol of a new belief to come.

Bauhaus’s Students

we all need to return to the craft.

Art is not a profession, there is no Program of the Staatliche Bauhaus in Weimar Walter Gropius, 1919

fundamental difference between an artist and a craftsman. The artist is an inspired craftsman.

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https://bauhausmanifesto.com/

Architects, sculptors, painters -

HISTORY

manifesto

masters and teachers

In keeping with Gropius’s romantic, preindustrial vision for modern arts education at the Bauhaus, the school’s structure followed a medieval guild model of labor organization. The majority of professors were deemed “masters,” while students were known as “apprentices” or “journeymen,” with a distant promise of graduating to the status of “junior master.” At Gropius’s insistence, students at the Bauhaus comprised a relatively diverse group in terms of age, gender, and nationality. His ambition was nothing less than to forge a new type of artist. A number of students educated at the Bauhaus became leading masters and influential teachers at the school: among them were Anni Albers and her husband Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Marianne Brandt, Marcel Breuer, Xanti Schawinsky, Joost Schmidt, and Gunta Stölzl.

Students not only lived and dined together but also spent their free time playing sports, designing publications, organizing parties and festivals, and collaborating on art projects. Parties at the Bauhaus were legendary and often elaborately themed, involving sets and costumes that required expertise from the workshops.

https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/bauhaus/new_artist/history/masters_apprentices/

Teachers were called “masters” at the Weimar State Bauhaus.

They included renowned artists such as Feininger, Kandinsky, Marcks and Klee. Later on, outstanding Bauhaus graduates were appointed as junior masters. Moreover, to ensure students acquired an all-round training, the Bauhaus regularly invited along guest lecturers and speakers.

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HISTORY

manifesto

masters and teachers

women

Although the school was praised for its more progressive approach to gender equality, some criticize the schools reputation, claiming that many of its female members went unnoticed both during and after the school’s short existence. Others claim that although the school fronted progressive ideas of gender equality, its administration was rooted in ideals of the past and in misogyny. In the case of Gertrud Arndt, she aspired to study architecture, but was instead redirected into the more domestic or „feminine” subject of weaving, after the administration claimed that there were no available architecture classes for her.Similarly, the school also attempted to redirect Benita Koch-Otte into more domestic subjects, but she persevered with her original studies and became an influential figure in both textile design and art education. However, during her studies, she was often encouraged to give up some of her classes in order to spend more time gardening. Another source of criticism surrounds the belief that Gropius’s proclamation of gender equality „remained theoretical in the teaching field.”

This refers to the gender ratio in the faculty, in which only six of forty-five faculty members were female at the Weimer location. The ratio of female to male faculty members did not improve much as the school progressed. Additionally, the decreasing number of female faculty members paralleled the decrease in female enrolment. The decline in female enrolment also corresponded to Gropius’s alterations to the acceptance policy for women.

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Because of the initially high influx of female students, Gropius stated that „for the foreseeable future, only women of extraordinary talents would be accepted into the school.” Some argue that this allowed Gropius to accept less female students on the pretence of talent recognition, which also contributed to the decrease in female students.

Gunta Stölzl

Anni Albers | Marianne Brandt | Alma Siedhoff-Buscher | Friedl Dicker | Ilse Fehling | Marguerite Friedlaender-Wildenhain | Gertrud Grunow | Dörte Helm | Florence Henri | Grete Stern | Gunta Stölzl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_of_the_Bauhaus

The Bauhaus was seen as a progressive academic institution, as it declared equality between the sexes and accepted both male and female students into its programs. During a time when women were denied admittance to formal art academies, the Bauhaus provided them with an unprecedented level of opportunity for both education and artistic development, though generally only in weaving and other fields considered at the time to be appropriate for women.

manifesto

masters and teachers

books

Thus did the young Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866– 1944) react to his first viewing of Monet’s Haystack, included in an 1895 Moscow exhibit of French Impressionists. It was his first perception of the dematerialization of an object and presaged the later development of his influential theories of non-objective art.

I had the impression that here painting itself comes to the foreground; I wondered if it would not be possible to go further in this direction.

In Point and Line to Plane, one of the most influential books in 20th-century art, Kandinsky presents a detailed exposition of the inner dynamics of non-objective painting. Relying on his own unique terminology, he develops the idea of point as the „proto-element” of painting, the role of point in nature, music, and other art, and the combination of point and line that results in a unique visual language. He then turns to an absorbing discussion of line — the influence of force on line, lyric and dramatic qualities, and the translation of various phenomena into forms of linear expression. With profound artistic insight, Kandinsky points out the organic relationship of the elements of painting, touching on the role of texture, the element of time, and the relationship of all these elements to the basic material plane called upon to receive the content of a work of art.

In this book, the world’s foremost color theorist examines two different approaches to understanding the art of color. Subjective feelings and objective color principles are described in detail and clarified by color reproductions.

The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/967310.The_Art_of_Color https://www.amazon.com/Point-Line-Plane-Dover-History/dp/0486238083

HISTORY

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manifesto

teaching methods

The Bauhaus teaching method replaced the traditional pupil-teacher relationship with the idea of a community of artists working together. Its aim was to bring art back into contact with everyday life, and architecture, performing arts, design and applied arts were therefore given as much weight as fine art. The name is a combination of the German words for building (bau) and house (haus) and may have been intended to evoke the idea of a guild or fraternity working to build a new society. Teachers included Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy and Josef Albers.

This conceptual diagram showing the structure of teaching at the Bauhaus was developed by Walter Gropius in 1922. The programme places ‘building’ [Bau] at the centre of all the activities. But a regular course in architecture was only introduced at the Bauhaus in 1927. Only the most talented students were admitted to the architecture course. At the start of their studies, they received a year of basic training in the so-called preliminary course, in which they were able to experiment with colour, shape and materials with no specific goals. Depending on their individual suitability, this was followed by practical work in the workshops and accompanying disciplines. The students entered the workshops as ‘apprentices’ and were to sit their ‘apprenticeship’ exams within a given time period.

Educational courses with this type of structure were unprecedented and had to be completely newly developed by Gropius initially. The choice of teachers was all the more decisive for the development of the Bauhaus’s viewpoints. Gropius succeeded in gaining the support of renowned avant-garde artists for the purpose. In Weimar, they carried out the teaching as ‘form masters’, together with the ‘work masters’ – trained craftsmen.

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To begin with, almost all of the workshops, like the preliminary course, were formatively influenced by Johannes Itten. Instead of getting the students to copy from models, as was still done in the traditional academies of art, he encouraged them to produce their own creative designs based on their own subjective perceptions. In the preliminary course, he taught the foundations of materials properties, composition, and colour theory. After Itten’s departure, the preliminary course was divided between László Moholy-Nagy and Josef Albers. Moholy-Nagy shifted the emphasis from artistic issues to technical ones and developed exercises on construction, balance and materials. Albers was responsible for familiarizing the students with craft techniques and appropriate use of the most important materials.

https://www.bauhaus.de/en/das_bauhaus/45_unterricht/ https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/b/bauhaus

HISTORY

Almost all of the masters moved to Dessau along with the college. Former students took over the direction of the workshops, as young masters: Marcel Breuer headed the carpentry workshop, Herbert Bayer the printing and advertising workshop, Hinnerk Scheper the workshop for mural painting, Joost Schmidt the sculpture workshop and Gunta StĂślzl the weaving workshop. In addition to the training, the declared goal was now ‘to carry out practical experimental work, particularly for house construction and interior decoration, as well as to develop model types for industry and crafts specialists’. Technical and formal experiments were carried out in the workshops on a broad basis in order to develop prototypes for industrial manufacturing and make it possible for broad strata of purchasers to buy qualitatively high-standard but affordable goods. The theoretical teaching was placed on a broader basis and engineering, psychology, business economics and other subjects were included in the teaching programme. The masters were now called professors, and the students received a Bauhaus diploma.

Under the third Director, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Bauhaus ultimately developed into a kind of college of technology for architecture. Mies van der Rohe reduced the structure and importance of work in the workshops. The art and workshop department now mainly served as groundwork and orientation for developing a more up-to-date form of architecture that used contemporary structures and materials.

Diagram for the structure of teaching at the Bauhaus. Source: Walter Gropius, 1922.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Diagram-for-the-structure-of-teaching-at-the-Bauhaus-Source-Walter-Gropius-1922_fig14_326320152

Beyond the preliminary course, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, among others, supervised and supplemented the teaching work on form and colour theory, and Oskar Schlemmer taught the analysis and depiction of the human body. In addition, classes were taught in non-artistic disciplines such as mathematics and building materials.

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policy

The story of the encounter between modernism and the Nazis has always been one of irreconcilable conflict. The Nazis condemned the movement as a symptom of a disease spread

by Jews and communists that was contaminating the German body politic. And they derided as „degenerate” artists like Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky — both teachers at the Bauhaus, the influential German art, architecture and design school founded in Weimar in 1919. One hundred years on, the school’s functional, industrial aesthetic endures, from sleek, minimalist smart phones to mass-produced modular furniture. It is celebrated today as a progressive, radical „powerhouse of modern culture”, while the barbaric and crushing uniformity at the heart of Nazi ideology is condemned as its antithesis.

But the Bauhaus legacy is, in parts, darker than many of us like to imagine. In 1933, when the Bauhaus was sealed off by the Nazis, who viewed it as a breeding ground for what they called „cultural Bolshevism”, the school’s director, Mies van der Rohe, went to see then culture minister Alfred Rosenberg. „[Rosenberg] said that the government would support the continuation of the school but [only as] long as the school abandoned modernism and became a propaganda tool for the Third Reich,” Weber says: Hear more about the Bauhaus The Bauhaus building in Dessau. Lost and Found explores the leading artists, architects and designers, its most iconic designs and its enduring legacy. „It was in a very dignified and strong way that the remaining masters of the Bauhaus refused to conform to the propaganda approach to art endorsed by the Third Reich and closed the school, rather than cave into the government.” „I started studying the Bauhaus 50 years ago,” says Weber, „and for most of that time I assumed — and this was consistent with what was written in almost every Bauhaus book — that virtually everyone at the school fled. „They went into exile, there was no place for Bauhaus art in Nazi Germany and one didn’t think more about it. You heard about Mies van der Rohe ... going to Chicago, Gropius going to Boston, the Alberses going to North Carolina, Kandinsky to Paris and so on.

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The Nazis shut down the Bauhaus, but the school’s legacy lived on in the Third Reich.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus

HISTORY

HISTORY

manifesto

typography The Fraktur is an adaptation of the Gothic typeface using Latin alphabets and had been in use across Europe in the 20th century. The Nazis however, adapted the typeface as a representation of “true” German values. Art historians believe that the Bauhaus typeface emerged to counter the Fraktur and it’s nationalistic association with Nazi Germany. When they were initially represented as true German script; official Nazi documents and letterheads employed the font, and the cover of Hitler’s Mein Kampf used a hand-drawn version of it.

How is Bauhaus influencing typeface today?

Bauhaus has contributed immensely to typography and graphic design and there are several visible examples of its influence. Among the most notable examples of Bauhaus typeface include German typographer Jan Tschichold’s book cover designs for Penguin between 1947 to 1949.

More recently, Adobe, the software company, in collaboration with German type designer Erik Spiekermann digitised special Bauhaus fonts to mark the school’s 100th anniversary, for the software company’s ‘Hidden Treasures’ series.

The Bauhaus emphasized practicality, and the school popularized sans-serif typographical designs like the Universal font, which are meant to be clear, readable, and versatile. Serifs are small ornaments that stick off of letters in some fonts (think Times New Roman or Courier), while sans-serif fonts (think Arial or Helvetica) do away with these. The reduction simplicity that these fonts feature were integral principles of the Bauhaus’ approach to design. While this might not seem like a

‘Georg Trump’s Deutsche Schriften der Schriftgiesserei H. Berthold A.G. Berlin SW 61, Bismarck-Fraktur, Probe Nr. 279. Fraktur typeface. MoMA, New York.

big deal today, when hundreds of fonts are available with just the click of a button, the shift to sans-serif was a radical move in the heyday of the Bauhaus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur

of ornamentation and the emphasis on

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INTRODUCTION

Bauhaus style in the Present

Bauhaus style in the Past

This part divided into subgroups A and B relates to design from Bauhaus and design now inspired by Bauhaus. I will describe the most important assumptions that define „Bauhaus style�.

I will show how designers use this theme today.

key colors

We think of color as transcendent – a language of sorts that signifies independent of cultural differences, time period, or aesthetic movement. Color is a powerful tool that permits designers to influence mood, compose spaces, and even make profound statements. We accept these truths about color, but we don’t often take the time to examine the roots of these core beliefs – where these ideas came from and how they were promoted. If fact, it surprises many designers to discover that part of the foundation of our modern understanding of color and its uses is rooted in Bauhaus color theory.

One of the most enduring influences, though, is the Bauhaus color theory that was taught under four prominent artists.

Bauhaus ColorThe contributions of Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Josef Albers undergird much of what we currently understand and believe about color, and an examination of the teachings of these four artists helps us understand not only the formation of modern color theory, but indeed how color theory is developed and transmitted.

Itten taught that there were seven different methods of contrast: contrast of saturation, of light and dark, of extension, complementary contrast, simultaneous contrast, contrast of hue, and contrast between warm and cool colors. One of his particularly interesting practices in the classroom was to work students through an examination of color and in particular his theory about contrast by first examining abstract works, reflecting the Bauhaus’ Kandinsky, the Russian painter best known for his bold, geometric abstract works. He considered color to be an utterly transcendent language of sorts, a way to examine the universal aesthetic. He adopted a synesthetic relationship with color, associating particular colors with both specific geometric shapes and with musical tones and chords. Yellow, for example was best expressed as a triangle and was the color expressed by a middle C played on a brassy trumpet.

Circles were blue, and the color black in musical terms.

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Paul Klee taught at the Bauhaus from 1921 until 1931. Like Kandinsky, Klee tended to think of color in musical terms, making the connection between harmonious sounds and complementary colors, as well as dissonant sounds and colors that clash. Klee wanted his students to understand that color wasn’t just a tool for the faithful reproduction of nature. Color for Klee was a powerful device that enabled a painter to shape, compose, and influence paintings, rooms, and even the people who interact with artwork. In order to fully understand the power of color, students had to see color as freed from its naturalistic, descriptive role.

The kingdom of colors has within it multidimensional possibilities only partly to be reduced to simple order. Each individual color is a universe in itself.

Johannes Itten

Red, said Kandinsky, “is distinguished from yellow and blue by its characteristic of lying firmly on the plane, and from black and white by an intensive inner seething—a tension within it.

Wassily Kandinsky

https://www.sensationalcolor.com/bauhaus-color/ https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/bauhaus/new_artist/form_color/color/

PAST

key colors

Beyond the preliminary course, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, among others, supervised and supplemented the teaching work on form and colour theory, and Oskar Schlemmer taught the analysis and depiction of the human body. In addition, classes were taught in non-artistic disciplines such as mathematics and building materials.

What the Bauhaus gave us, though, is an understanding of color that pushes us to think beyond the representational.

It forces us to confront the real emotional weight of our color choices, and it urges us to try out our terminology that applies to shape and sound in our understanding of color, giving us alternatives that open our minds to innovative and powerful ways to employ color in our work and lives.

Under the third Director, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Bauhaus ultimately developed into a kind of college of technology for architecture. Mies van der Rohe reduced the structure and importance of work in the workshops. The art and workshop department now mainly served as groundwork and orientation for developing a more up-to-date form of architecture that used contemporary structures and materials.

Kandinsky defined the material surface on which the work of art is constructed as the “basic plane,” abbreviated “BP.” The square was the most typical form of the basic plane and corresponded to the standard shape of most painted canvases, while red was its most natural color pairing: red, as Kandinsky explained, “is distinguished from yellow and blue by its characteristic of lying firmly on the plane, and from black and white by an intensive inner seething—a tension within it.

https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/bauhaus/new_artist/form_color/color/ https://www.behance.net/gallery/87532269/Bauhaus-Poster

PRESENT

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PAST

magazine Until 1928, 5 issues were published under the editorship of Walter Gropius and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Then Hannes Meyer and Ernst Kallรกi took the wheel. The design was in the hands of Joost Schmidt. He modified the logo of Herbert Bayer. From 1929 on the lettering appeared in white in a black rectangular shape, the logo of the 1931 issues had a minimalistic design.

https://www.bauhaus-dessau.de/issue-1.html

The first issue of the bauhaus magazine was published in December 1926 to coincide with the opening of the Bauhaus building in Dessau. Every three months (with interruptions), it reported on events in Dessau and important modern trends. Walter Gropius, Lรกszlรณ Moholy-Nagy, Ernst Kallai and Hannes Meyer contributed to the magazine as editors. The authors included Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Hilberseimer and many others. The last issue was published in 1931.

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magazine

80 years after the discontinuation of this periodical, we, as the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, are publishing a new magazine under the old name. In doing so, we by no means presume to replicate an interrupted tradition. The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation is not resuming the unique historical experiment of the “Bauhaus”. Nonetheless, it does work at the same place – the Bauhaus building in Dessau – and its remit is to cultivate the legacy of the historic Bauhaus and, “given the ideas and approaches of the historic Bauhaus, to address issues of design in the present-day environment” (the Foundation’s statute). The biannual magazine aims to report and comment on the activities of the Foundation and its partners. It will thereby not only focus on activities in Dessau, but also on those of an international network exploring issues of design. This issue of the magazine will delve into the history of modernity and its relevance to us today. The editors will select a main theme for each issue, which refers to one of the Foundation’s bigger projects. The first issue is dedicated to the artist Kurt Kranz and marks the exhibition “Kurt Kranz: Programming Beauty”, which is one of the Foundation’s biggest art exhibitions in ten years.

The main theme facilitates the presentation of diverse projects in a contentual context. In the process, we will always endeavour to forge a link between historical positions and contemporary issues. Modernity itself became history long ago, and only by reflecting critically on one’s own history can this be seminally updated. The thematic spectrum is a broad as the Foundation’s own work and encompasses all design disciplines – from the visual and performing arts, graphic design and product design, to architecture and urban development.

The magazine itself aspires to provide a platform for contemporary graphic design. Every year, the Foundation, together with external jurors, will choose a new graphic designer for the year, each of whom will design two issues of the magazine (as well as additional products).

The first will be the Novamondo agency of Berlin. Our aim thereby is to carry the diversity of the Bauhaus legacy forward into the present day in a new form. Each time, after two issues, the magazine will appear in a completely new guise, thus in itself becoming part of the research into current positions in design.

https://fontsinuse.com/uses/28775/bauhaus-now-magazine https://www.bauhaus-dessau.de/issue-1.html

PRESENT

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brading

Making branding with a purpose: what can we learn from the Bauhaus? A brand’s motives underpin every decision it makes. If Disney’s purpose is to “bring magic to people’s lives,” that impacts decisions on how wide to build the streets leading up to Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. In Nike’s case – working under a goal “to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world…If you have a body, you are an athlete” – this sets the agenda for which celebrity athletes to use as brand ambassadors. Every decision has the motive of the company guiding their choice.

Although many brands understand how important it is for their business to have a common motive that focuses their aims and helps their audience understand the reasons behind their decisions, it’s easy to get distracted by profit margins and business targets. This is why we chose to look at brand purpose through the alternative prism of the Bauhaus movement. The Bauhaus movement emerged following the end of the First World War. Germany’s defeat opened up a new era of possibility for creative disruption, within which Walter Gropius established a new school of design. The Bauhaus school was established on the central principle that art and craft are of equal value. This principle led Gropius to develop a new curriculum and to place all disciplines of art and design on equal footing. The Nazis saw Bauhaus as degenerate, preferring the more traditional, earlier Romantic period of art. As such, as their power grew, the Bauhaus school moved from city to city in the attempt to escape their oppression. Once their power became absolute in Germany, the Nazis gave Bauhaus a choice: conform to their ideals of art, or close. Faced with this, the school chose to remain steadfast in their principles, and closed 14 years after opening.

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Despite closing, the influence of the movement prevailed. The practices of form following function and staying true to materials that epitomised the style are evident in society today in New York’s MetLife building and Tel Aviv’s White City, a collection of over 4,000 buildings built in the Bauhaus style; indeed, many saw the design of the first iPod as indicative of the Bauhaus style.

If the Bauhaus methodology has taught us one thing, it’s to experiment—so get out of your comfort zone and find the sweet spot between form and function. If you hire a capable designer, they’ll be able to share their professional insight and find the style that’s best for you.

https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/bauhaus-and-brand-purpose-opinion

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brading

Just as the Bauhaus had a resolute set of principles, brands need to either establish or rediscover the purpose behind their brand in order to guide their decision-making process.

This makes it easier for the public to understand why a brand may move into a space that initially seems unconventional.

Some brands already have a well-established brand purpose, while others don’t, but the fundamental question is whether the company’s employees, audience and industry are aware of their message. A brand’s purpose can’t be something that only members of the board are aware of; it needs to permeate throughout the business, and be evident in each decision they make.

Product packaging designed by Anselmo Alef

Under the third Director, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Bauhaus ultimately developed into a kind of college of technology for architecture. Mies van der Rohe reduced the structure and importance of work in the workshops. The art and workshop department now mainly served as groundwork and orientation for developing a more up-to-date form of architecture that used contemporary structures and materials.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/66942729/Adobe-Hidden-Treasures-Bauhaus-Logo

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typography

The Bauhaus - probably the most important avant-garde school of the twentieth century, founded in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius in Weimar, relocated to Dessau in 1925 and closed in 1933 in Berlin under pressure from the Nazi Regime - offers numerous points of reference to all those interested in architecture and Design.

At the Bauhaus workshops modern objects were created for a new lifeworld, from everyday objects to residential buildings. More than a few designs, especially in furniture and architecture, gained historical significance.

Typography played an important role in the founding of the Bauhaus. Still influenced by the expressive-calligraphic imagery of Johannes Itten in the early years, the Bauhaus contributed to the spread of the so-called New Typography, in particular through the teachers LĂĄszlĂł Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer and Joost Schmidt. Primarily used in self-promotion for the school and its products but also increasingly for commissioned work, the works are often characterized by a clear type area, the use of concise typographic signs, strong contrasts of color, size and position, standardized formats and the interpenetration of image and font.

The Bauhaus emphasized practicality, and the school popularized sans-serif typographical designs like the Universal font, which are meant to be clear, readable, and versatile. Serifs are small ornaments that stick off of letters in some fonts (think Times New Roman or Courier), while sans-serif fonts (think Arial or Helvetica) do away with these. The reduction of ornamentation and the emphasis on simplicity that these fonts feature were integral principles of the Bauhaus’ approach to design. While this might not seem like a big deal today, when hundreds of fonts are available with just the click of a button, the shift to sans-serif was a radical move in the heyday of the Bauhaus

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https://www.bauhaus100.com/the-bauhaus/books-on-the-bauhaus/bauhaustypography/

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typography

Eagle-eyed readers will spot the Bauhaus connection here immediately: The Mohol typeface is named after Hungarian Bauhaus painter and photographer László Moholy-Nagy. Designed by Adam Katyi of the Austria-based Hungarumlaut type foundry, Mohol was originally created for the László Moholy-Nagy Design Grant in 2016. “The brief was to design a new typeface, in respect of László Moholy-Nagy’s work and heritage,” says Katyi, who also teaches at the Moholy-Nagy Art and Design University. Moholy-Nagy’s Constructivist-leaning approach is reflected in the way Mohol’s letters are built up from basic shapes. The regular lowercase “n,” for instance, fits into an optical square, and the counter of the rounded shapes is a neat circle.

Typotheque type foundry founder Peter Biľak designed Julien in 2011. The designer doesn’t directly cite the Bauhaus as a reference, instead he describes Julien as a “playful geometric display typeface loosely inspired by the early 20th century avant-garde.” The font is based on elementary shapes and comes in two weights: one very light and one very dark. “Each weight comes with three different styles, round, square and mixed,” Bil’ak explains. “The style name indicates the predominantly used shapes within the set, so you can choose the visual character of your words accordingly.” There are a whopping number of variants to each letter—more than 1,000 glyphs per style, in fact.

The first version of Joost was directly related to Herbert Bayer’s Universal Alphabet, which contains only lower case characters. However, Joost expanded beyond the constraints of Bayer’s alphabet to include diacritics, punctuation and a full 256 ASCII table of codes, symbols, and signs. The second version, released in 2009, saw a number of developments and improvements to the typeface including the addition of uppercase letters. In 2016—86 years since the creation of Schmidt’s poster—Joost was updated again to contain a complete character set of Central European, OpenType features, and a new system of curves.

Sure, the school shuttered in 1933, but its typographic traditions are still as present as ever

Mohol Type, by Hungarumlaut

Julien, by Peter Bil’ak

Joost, by José Manuel Urós

https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/five-fonts-that-prove-bauhaus-typography-is-alive-and-well/

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posters This modern-day Coca-Cola advertisement has also taken inspiration from Bauhaus design. It uses the diagonal orientation of text, as well as simplifying shapes into block colours and combining diagonal lines with circles. The use of the lines leads the eye down the page, and is also a main feature in a lot of Bauhaus designs, along with circular shapes. They have used a very rounded sans-serif font, similar to “Universal� and brought in the simplicity of contrast and kept to a palette of just 3 colours. The Advertisement on the right is a lot more simplified, like typical Bauhaus advertising, but both have been influenced by the style.

https://ncsgraphicshannahj2.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/the-bauhaus/

The poster on the left is for Obama’s visit to Berlin in 2008.

The poster on the right is an original Bauhaus advertisement from 1928. Comparing the two, you see the same use of diagonal orientation and lines, giving the text a new direction. They both have a strong, yet reasonably narrow, sans-serif font and use the same colour palette. The 2008 Obama poster is vastly modernized and less stripped-back and simplistic, but it follows the same theme. The image of Obama himself is simplified to monochrome colours and less detail than a photograph. The use of gradients in the new poster in unlike the Bauhaus design, but technology and materials have advanced to allow these kinds of contemporary effects. They both also have a round logo in the top right corner, keeping the layout very consistent.

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posters

The Bauhaus school was founded in Weimar

by German architect Walter Gropius in 1919. At the time, Europe was experiencing huge changes socially and politically, as well as technologically.

The Bauhaus school didn’t shy away from the impact of change, but instead embraced it. Students were taught to embrace modern technologies in order to succeed in a modern environment. ‘Form follows function’ was the key teaching of the Bauhaus, and this was applied in the school’s approach to graphic design and typography, as well as architecture. Design teachers like Herbert Bayer and Paul Kee emphasised a basics-first approach to design, breaking down and analysing the fundamentals of color, type and layout.

Bauhaus isn’t simply a style of the past—the school’s experimental approach to design and wholehearted embrace of new technology makes it today. If you’re looking for inspiration on how to give Bauhaus style a contemporary twist, look to these incredible examples by typographers, illustrators and graphic designers, who have all been directly inspired by the Bauhaus movement. From animating Bauhaus-inspired illustrations to reinterpreting Bauhaus typefaces for the digital arena, you’re sure to find something to inspire your own Bauhaus tribute.

https://blog.pixlr.com/graphic-design-the-bauhaus-style-in-2019/

just as relevant for designers working

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Although much of the Bauhaus’ contribution to graphic design was theoretical, there are nonetheless some key visual hallmarks of the school, which designers still use today, including: A distinctive color palette of primary colors, or simply black and white paired with a single color, like red or blue.

Collage graphics. Isolated figures and human features, like hands and eyes, were often used in Bauhaus poster designs, giving them a surrealist style.

Wasilij Kandinsky

Let us together create the new building of the future which will be all in one: architecture and sculpture and painting.

Walter Gropius

Geometric and minimalist typography. Many of the typefaces designed by Bauhaus members directly inspired later modernist fonts. Herbert Bayer’s experimental Universal typeface is probably the best-known of the Bauhaus type designs, which you can now download as a digital font, P22 Bauhaus.

Poster for the Bauhaus exhibition held in Weimar in 1923,

by Joost Schmidt.

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https://blog.pixlr.com/graphic-design-the-bauhaus-style-in-2019/

Experimental layouts and ‘broken’ grids. Pre-empting the anarchic ‘gridless’ layouts of 1990s-era designers like David Carson by 70 years, Bauhaus students were abandoning formal grids decades ahead of their time.

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illustration

We see the influence of Bauhaus design every day. We walk beneath the same buildings designed by Bauhaus architects, we sit in Bauhaus-style chairs, we turn Bauhaus-inspired door knobs without even acknowledging them as a product of design. Its influence on mass media is even more apparent, with marketing posters still using Bauhaus typography trends and the recent resurgence of minimalism in web design.

The truth is Bauhaus had a monumental impact on all art, and commercial design in particular.

If the Bauhaus methodology has taught us one thing, it’s to experiment—so get out of your comfort zone and find the sweet spot between form and function. If you hire a capable designer, they’ll be able to share their professional insight and find the style

Lettering design by Anna Fahrmaier and Birgit Palma on behalf of Adobe.

‘Bette Davis’ digital illustration by Zoki Cardula.

https://99designs.com/blog/design-history-movements/famous-logos-bauhaus-style/

that’s best for you.

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logo|sign

In 1922, the German artist Oskar Schlemmer designed a modest logo - a face within a disc - for his colleagues at the Bauhaus. Its nose is a crisp vertical. Its chin is a right angle. Its eye is a black square. Schlemmer’s little image, with its aura of the prototype, suggests many of the principles conscientiously promoted by that famous school at Weimar -- a reliance on the rational, a deep distrust of whimsy, an industrial esthetic. But it differs in one crucial way from other Bauhaus products. It was fathered by the T-square in the realm of the machine. Yet still it depicts Man. Man was always Schlemmer’s subject. But never Man the Individual. He made figures but not portraits. The visage in his logo -- archetypical, generic, stripped of all expression -- suggests a hundred others in the surprising and important Schlemmer retrospective now on exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Unlike other German artists in the years between the wars, he found Expressionism’s chaos, its fire and excesses, deeply disagreeable. He was equally distrustful of nonobjective art.

Man was always Schlemmer’s subject. But never Man the Individual. He made figures but not portraits. The visage in his logo -- archetypical, generic, stripped of all expression -- suggests a hundred others in the surprising and important Schlemmer retrospective now on exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Unlike other German artists in the years between the wars, he found Expressionism’s chaos, its fire and excesses, deeply disagreeable. He was equally distrustful of nonobjective art.

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„Man’s . . . sense of proportion,” he noted in his diary in 1923, „can, when used creatively . . . produce new phenomena.

Granted: geometry, the Golden Section, the laws of proportion, are lifeless and unproductive unless they are experienced, touched and felt.”

Oskar Schlemmer

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/style/1986/02/16/in-the-human-sphere-of-oskar-schlemmer/e5cef05b-a89e-4320-84ad-0bc9d1a959bc/

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The Bauhaus’s influence on typography and graphics was vast, transforming, for example, the advertising and branding of postwar corporate America. One of its most pervasive effects is in the signs that guide us around unfamiliar places like airports: the best of them use clear sans serif fonts, symbols that are graphically simplified but still informative and an underlying geometric order. All descend fromthe Bauhaus, usually by way of the influential Ulm School of Design, which was founded on Bauhaus lines in 1953.

But if traditional Bauhaus design doesn’t fit, you can always select individual aspects you like. Maybe you like the minimalist, geographic shape compositions—give it a metallic texture and maybe some 3D imagery and suddenly you have a logo that’s both traditional and cutting edge. You can choose from subtle elements, like the primary color pallette, or more obvious ones, like extending the stems of letters.

It’s arguable which characteristics constitute Bauhaus design—it’s more of a “know-it-when-you-see-it” deal. That said, these are the five common threads that almost every Bauhaus design follows: Form follows function Minimalism Revolutionary typography Passion for geometry Primary colors

To help you understand Bauhaus design in action, here’s how our designer community used these five principles to reimagine logos we all know and love in true Bauhaus fashion.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/87532269/Bauhaus-Poster https://99designs.com/blog/design-history-movements/famous-logos-bauhaus-style/

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pattern design

The emergence of the „African chair” dates back to the early years of Bauhausler Marcel Breuer and Gunta Stölzl: Breuer had transferred to the Bauhaus Weimar from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna just one year earlier. At the Bauhaus he trained in the wood workshop, then headed by Johannes Itten. Gunta Stölzl had already transferred from Munich’s Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) to the Bauhaus Weimar in 1919, its founding year, and trained there in the weaving workshop.

The “African Chair” is a work dating from the early expressionistic phase of the Bauhaus and a collaborative effort of the two Bauhauslers Marcel Breuer and Gunta Stölzl. Their collaborative project of 1921 was first given the name “African Chair” by Breuer many years later.

The five-legged “throne-like” frame of oak wood clearly shows traces of having been worked by hand. The uprights of the backrest are dotted with holes and serve as a framework for Gunta Stölzl’s weaving. Between the uprights she spans warp threads, around which, using the Gobelin technique, a colourful abstract pattern emerges. The expressive colourfulness of the woven backrest and seat pad is found again on the wooden frame. The still-visible warp threads, the obvious traces of workmanship on the wooden elements, and the painting on these, are reminiscent of works of folk art.

The “African Chair” first appears in print in the first issue of the magazine “bauhaus”, published in 1926. In it, a “film strip” shows the evolution of Breuer’s chair designs – from the “African Chair” and the De Stijl-inspired “Slatted Chair” (1924) to the tubular steel armchair (1925). As a visionary insight into the future, this “film strip” ends with a picture of a woman taking a seat on a “springy column of air”.

The “African Chair” was presumed lost for many years and was first rediscovered in 2004. Today, it is part of the collection of the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung, Berlin.

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https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/bauhaus/new_artist/form_color/color/ https:joinery/african-chair/

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pattern design

Yinka Ilori is a London based multidisciplinary artist of a British-Nigerian heritage, who specialises in storytelling by fusing his British and Nigerian heritage to tell new stories in contemporary design. He began his practice in 2011 up-cycling vintage furniture, inspired by the traditional Nigerian parables and West African fabrics that surrounded him as a child. Humorous, provocative and fun, each piece of furniture he creates tells a story, bringing Nigerian verbal traditions into playful conversation with contemporary design.

Yinka Ilori Studio was established in 2017 following a successful pitch to transform the Thessaly Road Bridge. The studio now consists of a team of colour-obsessed architects and designers, with the expertise and capacity to take on large-scale architectural and interior design projects. The studio continues to experiment with the relationship between function and form, with an output that sits between traditional divisions of art and design.

Christmas Tree Sanderson Hotel

https://yinkailori.com/journal

Restoration Station Furniture upcycling

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teathre

The Triadic Ballet, which premiered in Stuttgart in 1922, was the direct precedent to these experiments. The ballet featured 12 dances over the course of three acts, performed by three dancers in 18 different costumes. Each act was tuned to a different color, with music composed by Paul Hindemith.

The first presented a grotesque arranged on a yellow stage, the second a series of solemnities performed on a pink set, and the third a mystical meditation danced on a black stage that seemed to recess into infinity. Though The Triadic Ballet was developed independently of the Bauhaus, it was emblematic of stage experiments under Schlemmer’s direction.

Led by Schreyer and later Schlemmer, the stage workshop attracted the talent of many students and masters. Their researches resulted in projects that played with the projection of light and shadow, emphasized the study of the human body, experimented with puppets and marionettes, and endlessly reconceived stage design to destabilize theatrical conventions.

„The essential difference between the fancy-dress balls organized by the artists of Paris, Berlin, Moscow, and the ones here at the Bauhaus is that our costumes are truly original,” Molnár wrote in a 1925 essay entitled „Life at the Bauhaus.” „Everyone prepares his or her own. Never a one that has been seen before. Inhuman, or humanoid, but always new. You may see monstrously tall shapes stumbling about, colorful mechanical figures that yield not the slightest clue as to where the head is.

Sweet girls inside a red cube. Here comes a witch and they are hoisted high up into

The human body was the building block of the theater.

the air; lights flash and scents are sprayed,” he continued. The parties began as improvisational events, but later grew into large-scale productions with costumes and sets made by the school’s stage workshop.

There was often a theme to the evenings.

One party was called „Beard, Nose, and Heart,” and attendees were instructed to show up in clothing that was two-thirds white, and one-third spotted, checked or striped. However, it’s generally agreed that the apotheosis of the Bauhaus’ costumed revelry was the Metal Party of 1929, where guests donned costumes made from tin foil, frying pans, and spoons. Attendees entered that party by sliding down a chute into one of several rooms filled with silver balls.

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https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/bauhaus/new_artist/body_spirit/theater/

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teathre

More so than any other art form, the theatre creates apocalypses, the destruction of worlds. It provides a means by which audience and performer alike can experience a shock—a transformative event at the level of the unconscious.

This fact has long been understood in politics, as director Peter Brook explains in his seminal book, The Empty Space.

“Instinctively, governments know that the living event could create a dangerous electricity,” he writes. “The theatre is the arena where a living confrontation can take place. The focus of a large group of people creates a unique intensity—owing to this, forces that operate at all times and rule each person’s daily life can be isolated and perceived more clearly.” The destruction of worlds can beget their creation as well though, as Walter Gropius understood when, in 1919, he formed the Bauhaus school in the immediate aftermath of World War I.

In Space, Movement, and the Technological Body, Bauhaus performance finds new context in contemporary technology. The GDS students predented preformances that explore new bodily and spatial interfaces. (2019) Schlemmer and others at the Bauhaus believed that industry, nature, and the human shared a form of geometry, and if they could find that, then they could produce new projects that you’ve never seen before.

The Stick Dance is the extension of the golden mean into space, because our anatomical form is based on those proportions; it is sacred geometry in motion.

When you see it and the other pieces performed, it’s like being in church. You will not hear a sound in the theatre.

In Space, Movement, and the Technological Body

In Space, Movement, and the Technological Body

https://www.behance.net/gallery/87532269/Bauhaus-Poster https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/2019/05/in-space-movement-and-the-technological-body-bauhaus-performance-finds-new-context-in-contemporary-technology/

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industrial design

Ninety years ago, Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus on humanistic principles. “Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilized society,” Gropius reflected in 1962 (Gropius, Walter. “My Conception of the Bauhaus Idea,” Scope of Total Architecture. Ed. Walter Gropius. New York: Colliers, 1962. 6-19). “Our conception of the basic unity of all design in relation to life was in diametric opposition to that of ‘art for art’s sake’ and the much more dangerous philosophy it sprang from, business as an end in itself.”

Gropius intended his principles to be a moral check on industrialism. The strict ideologies of elitist art and materialist business were dangerous in isolation, threatening to erase the human spirit. Gropius wanted designers to bring art and business together to serve the needs of people — all people . For the Bauhaus, the lynchpin of the whole endeavor was simplicity. “Less is more,” Bauhaus architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (known primarily by his surname) was a highly prolific architect, considered by historians to be one of the most important of the 20… was known to say. This principle extended beyond just the simplicity of form—those clean, geometric shapes and sleek surfaces that their products would become known for—to encompass function. Each item should be immaculately designed to make it easy for the consumer to use.

Bauhaus is seen as the main influence within many modern day designs in lots of different furniture and structures. IKEA which is a huge ready to assemble furniture chain, sells massive amounts of flat pack furniture that is heavily influence by the ideas of the Bauhaus school. Bauhaus was truly influential and a huge part of modern design and will be for many years to come.

A loved and famous Table lamp. Designed in 1924 by Prof. Wilhelm Wagenfeld (1900-1990)

Created in 1929 for the Barcelona International Exposition, the Barcelona Chair was designed

by Bauhaus director Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in collaboration with architect Lilly Reich. It features two slim rectangular cushions over a light, stainless-steel frame.

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https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-steve-jobs-learned-bauhaus

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industrial design

The designs — the chairs, the buildings — arose from those principles. To extract principles from the objects is to work backwards. There is no reason today that you can’t start with those original Bauhaus principles, create objects that are not severely geometric, and end up somewhere completely different, with designs appropriate for contemporary needs. In other words, IKEA doesn’t have to copy the style of Bauhaus objects or reproduce classic Bauhaus chairs to express an affinity with Bauhaus principles, like creating good design for the way people actually live.

It was part of the Bauhaus philosophy that modern design should harness industrial techniques to make products accessible to everyone. The Ikea Gunde folding chair, selling at £6, does just that. Its construction also has distant echoes of the tubular steel furniture that was among Bauhaus’s most famous creations, although with less finesse than the originals.

But Jobs was gunning for the latter. “This new object,” he said, “it’s going to be in everyone’s working environment and it’s going to be in everyone’s educational environment. It’s going to be in everyone’s home environment, and we have a shot at putting a great object there.”

Some eight decades earlier, in Germany, the artists, designers, and craftspeople associated with the Bauhaus school had tackled a similar problem. They’d observed the rise of manufacturing in the early 1900s and decided that the resulting mass-produced household goods were artless and soulless. So they intervened, creating furniture, appliances, even textiles that were elegant and eminently functional—and that could also be manufactured en masse.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/87532269/Bauhaus-Poster

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interior design

Founded originally as a school of design in Germany Bauhaus has impact on not only architecture, but art and industrial design too. The rules of architecture back before the WW2 was originally designed to cater for the social housing crisis and provide functional solutions. When we think of Bauhaus style, the mind usually wanders to thoughts of minimalist and modern house structures. While this may be true in some respects, there are many wonderful homes built today that pay homage to one of the greatest design movements in history. Maybe the most important teaching by the Bauhaus school was to reject the ornamentation and lavish decorative qualities of the previous architecture and design trend. Bauhaus design is practical and functional, and every aspect of the designe must have a use. This is fairly logical as before this time, the upper class societies in Europe favoured the Art Deco style, full of whimsical, over-the-top details.

In rejection of the Art Deco, the Bauhaus movement was also dedicated to leave this exaggerating style of design behind, by pursuing a pragmatic version for architecture, interior design, furniture, art and even graphic design. In this example, a striking contrast between black and white can be seen and has been executed to great effect. The colour and material palette in Bauhaus is always monochromatic, with the only acceptable pop of colour coming from the primary tones—blue, yellow and red such as the noted Wassily Kandinsky’s art shows.

Both the internal and external layout of a house could be open and well laid out, making best use of the available space. This was especially important in social housing situations where only a limited amount of square metres could be dedicated to each occupant. Why? Because it’s not the overall mass that makes a difference, but the space that is housed inside. This theory applies to every element inside the house, inclusive of the furniture.

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Bauhaus interior

While some may percieve Bauhaus style as somewhat boxy, its doctrine of using streamlined curves and shapes were in order to avoid space wastage or poor spatial layout which excercise is still common in both residential and commercial architecture. Where possible, it was also encouraged to make the building as unobtrusive as possible to the landscape it was situated upon such as in the case of this house in the woods.

https://budapest.athome-network.com/en/blog/homes-trends-design-2/the-bauhaus-home-and-interior-design-151

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interior design One of the most important contributions of the Bauhaus is in the field of modern furniture design. The characteristic Cantilever chair and Wassily Chair designed by Marcel Breuer are two examples. (Breuer eventually lost a legal battle in Germany with Dutch architect/designer Mart Stam over patent rights to the cantilever chair design. Although Stam had worked on the design of the Bauhaus’s 1923 exhibit in Weimar, and guest-lectured at the Bauhaus later in the 1920s, he was not formally associated with the school, and he and Breuer had worked independently

The Wassily Chair, also known as the Model B3 chair, was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925-1926 while he was the head of the cabinet-making workshop at the Bauhaus, in Dessau, Germany. Despite popular belief, the chair was not designed specifically for the non-objective painter Wassily Kandinsky, who was on the Bauhaus faculty at the same time. Kandinsky had admired the completed design, and Breuer fabricated a duplicate for Kandinsky’s personal quarters. The chair became known as „Wassily” decades later when it was re-released

by Italian manufacturer Gavina which had learned of the anecdotal Kandinsky connection in the course of its research on the chair’s origins.

on the cantilever concept, leading to the patent dispute.) The most profitable product of the Bauhaus was its wallpaper.

Later evaluation of the Bauhaus design credo was critical of its flawed recognition of the human element, an acknowledgment of „the dated, unattractive aspects of the Bauhaus as a projection of utopia marked by mechanistic views of human nature…Home hygiene without home atmosphere.

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architecture

The paradox of the early Bauhaus was that, although its manifesto proclaimed that the aim of all creative activity was building,[26] the school did not offer classes in architecture until 1927. During the years under Gropius (1919–1927), he and his partner Adolf Meyer observed no real distinction between the output of his architectural office and the school.

So the built output of Bauhaus architecture in these years is the output of Gropius: the Sommerfeld house in Berlin, the Otte house in Berlin, the Auerbach house in Jena, and the competition design for the Chicago Tribune Tower, which brought the school much attention. The definitive 1926 Bauhaus building in Dessau is also attributed to Gropius.

Apart from contributions to the 1923 Haus am Horn, student architectural work amounted to un-built projects, interior finishes, and craft work like cabinets, chairs and pottery.

In the next two years under Meyer, the architectural focus shifted away from aesthetics and towards functionality. There were major commissions: one from the city of Dessau for five tightly designed „Laubenganghäuser” (apartment buildings with balcony access), which are still in use today, and another for the Bundesschule des Allgemeinen Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes (ADGB Trade Union School) in Bernau bei Berlin. Meyer’s approach was to research users’ needs and scientifically develop the design solution.

Mies van der Rohe repudiated Meyer’s politics, his supporters, and his architectural approach. As opposed to Gropius’s „study of essentials”, and Meyer’s research into user requirements, Mies advocated a „spatial implementation of intellectual decisions”, which effectively meant an adoption of his own aesthetics. Neither Mies van der Rohe nor his Bauhaus students saw any projects built during the 1930s.

The popular conception of the Bauhaus as the source of extensive Weimar-era working housing is not accurate.

Two projects, the apartment building project in Dessau and the Törten row housing also in Dessau, fall in that category, but developing worker housing was not the first priori44

ty of Gropius nor Mies. It was the Bauhaus contemporaries Bruno Taut, Hans Poelzig and particularly Ernst May, as the city architects of Berlin, Dresden and Frankfurt respectively, who are rightfully credited with the thousands of socially progressive housing units built in Weimar Germany. The housing Taut built in south-west Berlin during the 1920s, close to the U-Bahn stop Onkel Toms Hütte, is still occupied.

The school became famous for its approach to design, which attempted to unify the principles of mass production with individual artistic vision and strove to combine aesthetics with everyday function.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus

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Is there a (particular) “Bauhaus style”? While Gropius promoted flexible and cost-efficient building by means of prefabricated components, Meyer’s buildings focused entirely on meeting their residents’ needs. By contrast, Mies van der Rohe was mainly concerned with removing boundaries between the interior and the exterior.

The results vary strongly. Just as the buildings of the three directors are very different from one another, the buildings of students and masters are not consistent in style.

Under the third Director, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Bauhaus ultimately developed into a kind of college of technology for architecture. Mies van der Rohe reduced the structure and importance of work in the workshops. The art and workshop department now mainly served as groundwork and orientation for developing a more up-to-date form of architecture that used contemporary structures and materials.

The clear lines and timeless design speak for the unmistakable Bauhaus style with the typical flat roof architecture. In keeping with this modern home design is the chic fireplace in the living area and the classically elegant steel staircase with solid wooden steps. The cubic house received top marks again for its energy credentials ​​ and for the healthy and unique Baufritz living environment.materials. https://www.bauhaus100.com/the-bauhaus/works/architecture/

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mind|body

Johannes Itten taught the first preliminary course. Before Bauhaus, students began their art education by copying existing works. In this course students spent the first six months exploring materials, form. Not dissimilar to education in yoga, students first a subjective perspective based on feelings and creativity with an objective understanding of the practice, principles, and techniques.

Both the Bauahus school and the yoga practice foster equanimity, possibility for improvement, and a deeper connection to one’s self. I’ll use Kandinsky’s art principles and modern yoga practice as lenses to explore: The point in art as the breath in yoga The line in art as the asanas in yoga The plane in art as the body in yoga The art in bauhaus as the pranayama in yoga

My first morning periods in class began with relaxation, breathing, and concentration exercises to establish the intellectual and physical readiness which make intensive work possible. The training of the body as an instrument of the mind is of great importance to a creative person.

How can a hand express a characteristic feeling in a line when the hand and arm are cramped?

Johannes Itten

Mazdaznan is a neo-Zoroastrian religion which held that the Earth should be restored to a garden where humanity can cooperate and converse with God. One of the most famous European followers of the movement was the abstract painter Johannes Itten, who taught at the Bauhaus, who insisted on shaven heads, crimson robes and colonic irrigation

The promotion and protection of health were important themes at the Bauhaus. As such, breathing and concentration exercises, and even works of art, were considered beneficial.

Symbol of Mazdaznan

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazdaznan

Students

PRESENT

mind|body

Not only the unity of art and craftsmanship, but also the harmony of body and mind played an important role at the Bauhaus: In her harmonisation classes, Gertrud Grunow gave rhythmic dance lessons. In Johannes Itten’s preliminary course, breathing and relaxation exercises were on the agenda. And in Dessau, students could attend sports and gymnastics classes.

Each of the Bauhaus Yoga sessions, recorded at the temporary bauhaus-archiv, is introduced by a short input about the historical Bauhaus. Exercises from the Bauhaus preliminary course and synaesthesia exercises according to Wassily Kandinsky complement the approximately 25-minute yoga sequences.

A connection between the mind, body, and spirit existed in art long before home to the most influential modernist art school of the 20th century, that physical and breathing exercises were part of daily creative work

https://www.bauhaus.de/en/programm/6238_bauhaus_yoga/

Bauhaus. But it was in Weimar Germany,

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PAST

fashion

The Bauhaus philosophy defined a new aesthetic around its ideals: simplicity, utility, and function with a view towards the future. This conceptual approach transformed the look and feel of the arts. The movement rippled into fashion, reflecting its pure, reductive ideas. These Bauhaus hallmarks are very apparent—even a century later—in the lines, geometry, and color of modern stylings.

The kingdom of colors has within it multidimensional possibilities only partly to be reduced to simple order. Each individual color is a universe in itself.

Unknown woman in tubular steel chair

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https://www.sensationalcolor.com/bauhaus-color/ https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/bauhaus/new_artist/form_color/color/

This year marks the centennial of the Bauhaus, one of the most important movements in art and design history. Founded by German architect Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus school is famed for its revolutionary “total” arts approach, blending fine arts, crafts, and technology. During its 14-year tenure, the school focused on practical, unified arts. Its creative influence spanned a range of art practices, architecture, and design. Key artists from the movement include Anni and Josef Albers, László Moholy-Nagy, and Wassily Kandinsky. While architecture and design pioneers Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier were also Bauhaus devotees. These creators and their work spurred the movement deep within the reaches of art and design.

fashion

Minimalism comes to light in varied modes of fashion design. Icon Jil Sander is known for refined shapes and neutral palettes. The first luxury house to collaborate with a sneaker company, Sander translated her simple elegance for the King sneaker with Puma in 1996 and the +J Collection with Uniqlo in 2009—touching on the collective, innovative Bauhaus spirit. For Fall/Winter 2016, Sander’s designs centered around shadow and light, referencing László Moholy-Nagy’s visual experiments with movement and lighting.

The artist’s “new vision” has inspired other designers, including Rei Kawakubo’s 1981 debut for Comme des Garçons, which showed avant-garde, deconstructed silhouettes. Nearly four decades later, contemporary brand Khaite unveiled its own version of practical simplicity—updated, classic pieces with a feminine sensibility for Fall/Winter 2019.

MARY KATRANTZOU FALL/WINTER 2018

ANNE GORKE is a fashion label based in Weimar where the Bauhaus originates from and where its spirit is still apparent in the young design scene.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/87532269/Bauhaus-Poster

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women

„Lotte am Bauhaus” is a production of German public television that claims the too long forgotten role of the women who studied at the Bauhaus. The film is based on Lotte Brendel a fictional figure that draws inspiration from the figure of Alma Siedhoff-Buscher (starring Alicia von Rittberg), who developed toys especially designed for children. As producers Benjamin Benedict and Nico Hofmann explain, „Lotte am Bauhaus” focuses on the emancipation efforts of a new generation of women and counts the 14 years of the Bauhaus in 105 minutes through the eyes of the young student.

“Bauhaus” is directed by Gregor Schnitzler and has the support of the current director of the Bauhaus Archive, Annemarie Jaeggi: „The film gives an idea of the ​​ creativity, curiosity and passion that were experienced in that experimentation center that was the Bauhaus”, she states.

The story of a young female student at the famous Bauhaus Design Academy in the early 1920’s, inspired by the real life of designer Alma Siedhoff-Buscher.

The Bauhaus began promisingly for women: „There is no difference between a beautiful and a strong sex. Absolute equality, but also absolutely equal duties”, Walter Gropius had announced. During the Weimar period they were initially the majority, but it was soon the opposite and many landed in the weaving workshops.

Although their names were condemned to a footnote, the Bauhaus also trained women. In the hundredth anniversary of its foundation, this historical drama roams Lotte am Bauhaus (2019)

the Staatliche Bauhaus classrooms from the point of view of one of its artists, Lotte Brendel, character inspired by the great Alma Siedhoff-Buscher.

https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/lotte-am-bauhaus-a-film-about-women-bauhaus https://www.behance.net/gallery/87532269/Bauhaus-Poster

PRESENT movie

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CONCLUSION Why does he still inspire artists and designers? In my publication I will try to answer this question. In the first part I will describe the school’s history and main issues. Why Bauhaus has become special In the second part I will compare projects from the past with current examples from design. In the third part I will summarize my thoughts and show some examples of projects that go beyond the current graphic solutions. They are innovative and experimental, just as the Bauhaus style was once innovative.

In the last part I will give a few examples of design that relate to the future. A design that uses innovative technologies and solutions. The excerpt and interdiscipline that have their source in Bauhas.

CONCLUSION This dynamic visual identity-system uses motion-capture data to combine visual algorithms with the personal expression of human dancers, creating intricate forms and mesmerizing snapshots of motion in the process. So, in a way, the very essence of Schwanensee is emerging visually. Design-assets created can range from key-visuals to posters, invitations, tickets, websites, interactive visuals to whatever may be required.

These assets are consistent in all forms of media and can be created at virtually no cost once established.

I specialize in telling fresh and meaningful stories at the intersection of design, technology and art. I research and apply novel forms of visual and interactive communication for brands, agencies and cultural institutions.

It is a means to liberate small theatres and cultural institutions by giving them a system they can use without any design-expertise and a minimal budget to create unlimited design-variations for their ne-

https://www.patrik-huebner.com/

eds right from within their webbrowser.

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CONCLUSION he bespoke work of Berlin-based design studio New Tendency aims to engage the senses beyond just the visual. The studio has crafted its internationally recognized name by championing the key principles of Bauhaus design, one of the most influential design movements from the early 20th century. We spoke to creative director Manuel Goller, one third of the studio, about their new collection and subsequent catalog ‘Raw Essentials’, the importance of tactility in our increasingly virtual environments, and making decisions to challenge the status quo.

Today we spend most of our time in virtual environments, leaving sliding our fingertips abovensmooth glass surfaces, as our only tactile experience” Today we spend most of our time in virtual environments, leaving sliding our fingertips abovensmooth glass surfaces, as our only tactile experience”

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NEUHAUS Around the globe, when the design fraternity is celebrating the centenary of Bauhaus, Het Nieuwe Instituut is trying to re-create anew Bauhaus for the 21st century. They move away from the idea of human-centered design to expand beyond the realm of imaginable target audience. As stated by them.

Starting in the Spring of 2019, exactly 100

The Histories design lab investigates our learnings in the past and where did they happen? How has learning been designed over the centuries? What ideology or vision was behind the ways in which experiments took place with the built environment?

If the idea of trans-species design(how I

years after the foundation of Bauhaus, Het Nieuwe Instituut transforms into Neuhaus, a temporary transdisciplinary academy for more-than-human.

would like to call it) is not clear, let’s have a look at the set of keywords that revolve around the ideology of Neuhaus: in the spirit of Bauhaus | human and more-than-human knowledge | humans / machines / plants / microbes / magic / animals | learning with the senses and sensors | co-existence | ‘rethinking the world’ | multi-species world-building | From Bauhaus to Neuhaus ; from individual authorship to collaborative making ; from material to matter.

The print on the left is created by the robotic arm which receives signals from the waves generated by plants. The installation is more of a conversation piece than figuring out the exact technology. It’s about initiating conversations.

The view of Ecologies Design Lab from Time Design Lab

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https://medium.com/@mananpahwa9/neuhaus-the-21st-century-contemporary-bauhaus-f47f5260d57d

A small workshop was conducted where every person wrote down a name of a living species in the universe. Two of them were chosen and held together : ‘homo sapiens’ and ‘bees’.

We had to visualise an academy where bees and humans could learn together. Neuhaus redefines everything, from spatial arrangement to the content of education. It puts us into a stage from where we can dwell into different realm of thoughts.

It investigates into topics like Cross species communication, multi species urbanism, collective bodies, extended senses, time worlds, meeting matter, more than human knowledge.