Eight years after the first world war a new symbol of hope and vitality was built in Weimar, the Staatliches Bauhaus, where “Bauhaus” is literally translated as “House of Building” (Fazio, Moffett, & Wodenhouse, 2013, p. 483). The Staatliches Bauhaus, commonly known as the Bauhaus, was first founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar, to be later moved to Dessau and then finally to Berlin; as a school of architecture, art and design, it had a huge influence on modern design. However, the Bauhaus has reached its peak in Dessau. Not only because of the concepts taught by the revolutionary professors who have instructed there at the time, but also because of the method of designing the school itself and how it has rendered itself crucial to the causes and concepts of the Bauhaus style, which was a result of processes of elimination and addition of different concepts until, what is arguably called, the “Bauhaus Style” was finally formed.
Gropius sought to reconcile between the arts and crafts in a new industrial aesthetic by forming the ideal relationship between art and the machine. After the publication of the first manifesto, Gropius announced that “The Bauhaus believes the machine to be our modern medium of design and seeks to come in terms with it” (Fitch, 1960, p.11). In doing so, he has managed to resolve the conflict that has existed in the Deutsche Werkbund for many years, the conflict between the “autonomous individual artistic creation” versus “industrial mass production” (Forgacs, 2010, p.267). As a result, the “Bauhaus style” was formed and it demanded that everything produced from products to architecture was designed with a high degree of rationalism, functionalism, elementarism and hence modernism, and according to Bax (2008), “the Bauhaus became the fountainhead of functionalism—in German: Neue Sachlichkeit—in art, architecture and design” (p.104). This can be seen in the teachings of the Bauhaus.
Under Gropius, the Bauhaus emphasized rationalism, functionalism and elementarism, all concepts which were translated into platonic forms, simple lines and primary colors. This can be seen especially in the 1927 tea infuser by Marianne Brant, where an everyday object stripped of ornament has achieved fame and beauty mainly through its simple form and function. Brant’s tea infuser is considered to be the quintessential Bauhaus product. (image) After Gropius left the Bauhaus, it was in the hands of Hannes Meyer to carry on the Bauhaus legacy. According to Droste (1990), Meyer placed the Bauhaus on a “contemporary footing” (p.196) where now social and scientific criteria were as equally important components to the design process so now “workshop activities were no longer based on the primary colors and elementary forms, but on questions of utility, economy and social target group.” (p. 196). Furthermore, it was only when Meyer was the director did the architectural commissions that came in to the Bauhaus be considered as Bauhaus commissions and not properties of Gropius’s private office (Kentgens-Craig, Robinson, & Stiftung, 1998, p. 7). Regardless, the Bauhaus has remained a center of rationalism, functionalism and modernism.
This is especially conveyed through Gropius’s design of the Bauhaus building at Dessau. Gropius intended that the Bauhaus would function as a self-sufficient town, hence has composed the school with a diverse collection of programs; the Higher Academy for the Arts workshops, the technical school, the administration department, the collective area, student accommodation, and teacher accommodation. Even though the school has numerous components, each space has its specific requirements, such as height differences, and design coherence; (Pinto de Vasconcelos, 2011) this follows the concept of elementarism. Furthermore, the spaces interlock in a pinwheel configuration, which, from the aerial view, hints at the form of airplane propellers that were manufactured in the surrounding areas (Sveiven, 2010).
The most powerful element of the Bauhaus is the Higher Academy for the Arts building, seen as a floating glass “cube circumscribed by an outer shell” (Pinto de Vasconcelos, 2011). Gropius had been inspired by both the literary work of the Paul Scheerbart and Bruno Taut’s Glass Pavilion, and in 1926 he wrote in an essay:
“glass is the purest building material consisting of earthy matter, closing off space and keeping out weather, but also having the effect of opening up space, without being and light… glass architecture, a poetic utopia until recently, is becoming an uninhibited reality”. (Kentgens-Craig, Robinson, & Stiftung, 1998, p.21)
As a result, he started to use curtain walls in his designs where he first tested his concepts in the Fagus Factory using a partial curtain wall to later use a full one with operable windows in the Bauhaus. Gropius intended to make a “glass box” and oriented the building on the NS axis in order to maximize the amount of light entering the studios and so that the students will always have natural light entering the workspace. However, the summer heat made this a major disadvantage, and so opaque curtains were later added. Furthermore, it was also a problem in the winter because of the lack of insulation, and also the steel structure rusted and needed replacement. In addition to the light, the glass structure was meant to provide a volumetric quality to the building, and with setback pillars, it was portrayed as a floating glass box, further elevating the importance of the Higher Academy for the Arts.
In contrast to the arts building, the technical building was more private with smaller windows. According to Kentgens-Craig, Robinson, and Stiftung (1998), the Bauhaus was required to include the “Technische Lehranstalt”, the technical school, that was administered independently of the Bauhaus. Hence, the architects decided to separate the Bauhaus from the technical building by placing them on different sides of the road. However, in their opinion even though it was clear that they were independent colleges, it was clear that they were both colleges in the Bauhaus (p. 16). Nevertheless, according to “The Dessau Bauhaus” documentary posted by Pinto de Vasconcelos (2011), the technical building was a lot less “prestigious” and hidden from views. It was described to be “the orphan of the building” (27:10).
Another important space within the Bauhaus was the Administration department. It was the space bridging between both the technical school and the arts school; furthermore, it housed the director’s office and the architecture workshop. It was at the center and raised off the ground providing it with a position of power (Kentgens-Craig, Robinson, & Stiftung, 1998, p.16). Moreover, by connecting the two schools, the bridge portrays the cubist idea of the interpenetration of space.
Finally, both the student and teacher accommodations also illustrated the concepts of functionalism, and elementarism. The student accommodation was the highest section of the building, it had five stories, twenty-eight rooms and related facilities (Fazio, Moffett, & Wodenhouse, 2013, p. 484). Of its most important features were the balconies. They provided additional space for the students, in addition to acting as an unintentional hangout. Furthermore, the façade of the dormitories played with the rhythm of white and black and also light and shadow. By differentiating between supporting and masking elements through the contrast between the white and black helped emphasize the construction of the building. Furthermore, the fact that the faculty housing was isolated from the rest of the school enforces a difference in status and confirms their superior status by giving them more privacy than the rest of the college.
The Bauhaus at Dessau is special for several reasons. Firstly, its concepts of rationalism and functionalism evoked industrialization, mechanization and efficiency, resulting in architecture, art and designs that has been influential up to this point in time. Furthermore, the design of the structure itself is seen to be a revolutionary step away from the typical educational facilities, through its articulation of the separate elements while simultaneously uniting the different programs together using the pinwheel configuration. All of the above has resulted in forming a “gesamtkunstwerk”, a total work of art.
References
Bax, M. (2008). Das Bauhaus und die Esoterik: Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee. Aries, 8(1), 104-106. doi:10.1163/157005908X246742
Droste, M. (1990). Bauhaus, 1919-1933. Köln: Benedikt Taschen. Klingelhoferstr, Berlin: The Bauhaus-Archiv Museum fur Gestaltung.
Fazio, M. W., Moffett, M., & Wodehouse, L. (2013). A world history of architecture (3rd ed.). London: Laurence King Pub.
Fitch. J. M. (1960). Gropius, The Educator. Walter Gropius (pp. 10-17). New York, NY: George Braziller, Inc.
Forgács, É. (2010). Between the Town and the Gown: On Hannes Meyer's Dismissal from the Bauhaus. Journal of Design History, 23(3), 265–274. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40801987
Kentgens-Craig, M., Robinson, M., & Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau. (1998). The dessau bauhaus building, 1926-1999. Boston: Birkheauser.
Pinto de Vasconcelos, F. C. [csxlab]. (2011, June 25). The Dessau Bauhaus | 01/23 [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyhrMZB-WLo
Sveiven, M. (2010, November 10). AD Classics: Dessau Bauhaus / Walter Gropius. Archdaily. Retrieved from http://www.archdaily.com/87728/ad-classics-dessau-bauhaus-walter-gropius