Bauhaus direction. Features of the use of the Bauhaus style in the interior: history and original options. Furniture, materials and color in the interior
in Weimar. Despite its name, and despite the fact that its founder was an architect, the Bauhaus did not have an architecture department during the first years of its existence. However, the school was founded with the idea of creating WORK OF ART - works in which all the arts, including architecture, will eventually be collected.
14 years of Bauhaus school history
The school existed in three German cities: Weimar from 1919 to 1925, Dessau from 1925 to 1932 - pictured, and Berlin from 1932 to 1933, under three different architect-directors: Walter Gropius from 1919 to 1928, Hannes Meyer from 1928 to 1930 and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930 to 1933 when the school was closed by its own management under pressure from the Nazi regime. The Nazi Government claimed that the school was the center of communist intellectualism. Although the school was closed, the staff continued to spread their idealistic precepts after they left Germany and emigrated.
Changes in location and leadership led to constant shifts in focus, technique, faculty, and politics. For example: the pottery shop was closed when the school moved from Weimar to Dessau, although it was important source income; when Mies van der Rohe took over the school in 1930, he turned it into a private school and prevented Hannes Meyer's supporters from participating.
As part of the Berlin Week, Look At Me talks about the main pillar modern design and architecture - the Berlin Bauhaus school, which brought up several generations of bold avant-garde artists in applied art. How a small private initiative defined the ideas of the 20th century, on what principles the idealists of the Bauhaus were going to build a new society and aesthetics, and why their ideas are still very modern - this will be discussed in the large Look At Me guide.
The period of the 1920s was both a difficult and inspiring time for Germany. It was in the fifteen years between the two world wars that Berlin became one of the main capitals of Europe, a city (“Roaring Twenties” - in many ways about the German capital), where innovation and change were thirsty. After the horrors of World War I, every thinking person felt the need for active opposition to the outside world. In the transitional period between 1918 and 1923, Germany had problems with inflation, which did not allow extensive experimentation in architecture, but the local scene was still heavily influenced by the Dutch group De Steil and the French titan of avant-garde architecture Le Corbusier.
From left to right: post-war Berlin, The Roaring Twenties by Piet Mondrian, the church as interpreted by the French architect Le Corbusier
They tried to open an interdisciplinary school, which would be a creative laboratory for professionals in various fields, back in 1907. The prototype of the Bauhaus was the Munich Werkbund school ( Deutsche Werkbund). There was also a School of Applied Arts in Weimar, whose co-founders, designer Henri van de Velde and Hermann Methesius, long time could not agree among themselves. It all ended with the fact that the young architect Walter Gropius headed the experimental Weimar school, inspired by what the Munich Werkbund was at that moment. In 1919, Gropius founded the Bauhaus, from two rival design schools in Weimar. The simple and capacious name of the Bauhaus (bau - "to build", haus - "house") reflected the clear and at the same time ambitious goals of the founders of the school - to understand the laws by which architecture works, which encompasses all manifestations of life and dictates the logic and aesthetics of private and public spaces.
Influenced by Johannes Itten, the early years of the Bauhaus were influenced by German Expressionism: Itten taught a basic year-long course in basic design and color theory for three years. At that moment, the methods and approaches of the Bauhaus, which was a public school, had a lot of opponents among officials and conservatives. In order to establish themselves on the local stage and not lose state budgets, in 1923 the teachers and students of the Bauhaus held the first major exhibition that went down in history. Despite the obvious achievements of the avant-gardists, the National Socialists who came to power lobbied for their own aesthetics, which reflected the imperial ambitions of Germany in the second half of the 1920s. And although Bauhaus graduates demonstrated independence and the incredible success of the educational experiment, the school had to move to Dessau, where it retained government support. Immediately, just a year after the move, the famous building designed by Gropius was built, and the interiors and furniture were made by students and teachers of the school. The design of this building set a new direction for the style of the school - now it was industrial functionalism.
From left to right: posters Deutsche Werkbund, Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, Werkbund school poster, Bauhaus in Dassau, coffee table by Gropius
In 1928, Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, resigned and was replaced by Hannes Meyer, making the school more commercially successful in a short period of his leadership (1928-1930). Meyer made lectures on economics, psychology and Marxism among the compulsory subjects, which really captured the minds of the intellectuals of Western Europe. And although the next reform of the school in 1930 turned it mainly into an architectural institution, the school was closed a year later, when fascism began to assert itself in society as the dominant paradigm. On June 19, 1933, the masters of the school had no choice but to hold a meeting and vote for the dissolution of the Bauhaus. Hiding from persecution and attempted freedom, Gropius, Mendelssohn, Mies van der Rohe and many others emigrated through Britain to the United States.
From left to right: interior items designed by teachers and students of the Bauhaus school, color theory Johannes Itten
During the Second World War, the Bauhaus-Dessau was partially destroyed, and only thirty-five years later the building was restored as a historical monument. In 1960, the Bauhaus archive began to collect all the works and documents of the important school XX century through former graduates in Germany, the rest of Europe and America and their families. A huge archive of twenty-six thousand works, including experiments in painting, sculpture, architecture, photography and design, was collected along with letters, books and informal photographs taken in the workshops of that time. The building now houses the Bauhaus-Dessau Foundation, a center for research, teaching and experimental design. In addition to the permanent exhibition, every year the Bauhaus-Dessau Foundation organizes an International Summer School with a new theme. In 2012, the theme of the summer school is Didactic Home, it lasts ten days and consists of four workshops. Participation in the school is paid, three hundred euros.
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Bauhaus building in Dessau
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Johannes Itten
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Armchair "Barcelona"
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Armchair "Vasily"
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Graphic design
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Teapot
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Desk clock
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Stacking tables
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Font Architype Albers
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Bauhaus chess
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Walter Gropius (1883–1969)
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Johannes Itten(1888–1967)
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Laszlo Moholy-Nagy(1895–1946)
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Paul Klee(1879–1940)
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Hannes Meyer(1889–1954) |
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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe(1886–1969)
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Marcel Breuer (1902–1981) |
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Wassily Kandinsky(1866–1944)
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Herbert Baier (1902–1981) |
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Marianne Brandt(1893–1983)
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One of the main principles of the work of the new artist, the masters of the Bauhaus proclaimed the merging of art and craft, best example which architecture has become. The creators of the Bauhaus speak about the community of artists as a laboratory of highly professional artisans in their manifesto: in those days, all avant-garde schools and trends in art preferred to collect theses in this form.
The legendary Bauhaus training program combined craft with art at a very early stage, culminating in peer-to-peer collaboration between students in a workshop with a teacher, and culminating in a building experiment on a dedicated site.
The duration of six months, at the end of the course - transfer to training workshops. Instead of the history of arts and theories, the experimental course became the basis at the Bauhaus: in the first six months of work at school, the student got acquainted with the concepts of proportion, scale, rhythm and light, shadow and color. This allowed him to try himself in all areas at once and go through all the stages of the simplest exercises with various materials and tools, so that everyone could find their personal vocation. Even the Bauhaus teachers were very cautious about the achievements of technology and believed that one of the tasks of the teacher was to protect the artist from the upheavals of the "mechanical age".
Lasts three years. After working in the training workshops, the artist was accepted into the craft guilds, and then into the Bauhaus team. This is how the famous design community of Berlin developed, where there were no students and teachers, and the roles changed regularly. Separately, during the practical course, students were taught proportions, optical illusions and color.
The third and most serious phase of the Bauhaus. Practical participation in construction (on a real construction site) and free creative participation in construction process(at the Bauhaus experimental site) for those who have achieved the best results in their studies.
Despite the extremely difficult period in which the Bauhaus and its ideas had to survive - lack of money, forced relocation and eventually closure - the ideas of this school, which lasted only fourteen years, penetrated into all areas. Instead of perishing in alien conditions, the Bauhaus rediscovered itself in a new context. And even after the closure of the school, the Bauhaus continued to develop in the form of a current in the work of its individual participants: Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe became one of the most important and influential architects in the United States of that time, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy opened the New Bauhaus in Chicago (now it is part of the Illinois Institute of Technology), Hannes Meyer went to the USSR with a group of students.
In Italy in the 1940s and 1950s, Bauhaus ideas found their way into the architecture of the rationalist movement. In America, the so-called international style in architecture was born due to the emigration of many Bauhaus teachers. The Swiss school of the 1950s copied many of the ideas of the Bauhaus with regard to typography and communication design, an influence that later carried over to America. It was at this time that the Helvetica font was born (1957, Max Miedinger). The first postmodernist artists cited the Soviet constructivists, the European avant-garde and the Bauhaus as among their strongest influences. Today, works made almost a century ago at the German Bauhaus school continue to inspire contemporary artists.
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Bauhaus Dessau by Hort
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On April 25, 1919 in the German city of Weimar, the Higher School of Construction and Design - Bauhaus was formed. Literally, this word is translated from German as "building house". The first director and inspirer of the school was the German architect Walter Gropius, who formulated it main principle like this: “We want to invent and create together a new building of the future, where everything will merge into a single image: architecture, sculpture, painting, a building that, like temples raised into the sky by the hands of artisans, will become a crystal symbol of a new, coming faith” V. Gropius. boundaries of architecture. M., 1971.. Gropius was convinced that it was precisely the new constructive thinking, combining architecture, painting, urban planning, social disciplines, that would make it possible to create Gesamtkunstwerk - "a great universal work of art" The term Gesamtkunstwerk ("gezamtkunstwerk") appeared thanks to the German composer and art theorist Richard Wagner (Richard Wagner. "Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft", 1871).. This and other principles formulated in the Bauhaus determined the development of architecture in the 20th century. Teachers and students found the answer to the question that worried architects since the end of the 19th century - what should be the language of new architecture in the era of steam and electricity, rapid industrialization, and promising technological progress. The Bauhaus believed that the form of the building would be more expressive, more honest, more convincing, corresponding to the design and manufacturing technology. Decorative elements - frieze, capital, architraves - hide engineering solutions. The Bauhaus architects, on the other hand, wanted to flaunt modern design techniques. This new architecture abandoned the decorative elements of the classical order system. Order(from the Latin "ordo" - "system, order") - a kind of architectural composition that arose in ancient Greece and influenced the history of all European and world architecture. The order system provides for strict rules that determine the shape and location of all elements of the building, as well as their proportional relationship., but actively studied the potential of the psychophysical impact of various forms, materials and color solutions on a person. The artists and architects of the Bauhaus hoped for a grandiose social reform and believed that the new art would help to nurture a new personality and build a happy future for all mankind. Hence the interest in the construction of mass, standard housing, in which high living standards will be available to all segments of the population.
The curriculum consisted of three courses and was something completely new. In the preparatory or foundation course, students were given basic knowledge about colors, shapes, texture of materials, proportional laws (students studied the functions of complementary colors, the psychophysical impact of various forms and color solutions). Then there was a practical course - work in the workshops, where the students themselves made things. On the third, construction course, they worked at a construction site. But the history of art was deliberately taught as late as possible - to prevent copying and stylistic borrowing.
Paul Klee in his studio at the Bauhaus. Weimar, 1924 Getty Images
Actors of "Triadic Ballet" by Oscar Schlemmer at the Metropol Theatre. Berlin, 1926 Getty Images
A scene from the play "Don Giovanni and Faust" by Christian Dietrich Grabbe at the German National Theatre. Artist Oskar Schlemmer. Weimar, 1925 Bridgeman Images / Fotodom
Wassily Kandinsky. Descent. 1925 Bridgeman Images/Fotodom
Office of Walter Gropius. Dessau, 1925-1926 Getty Images
Marianne Brandt. Teapot in silver plated brass with ebony handle and cruciform base. 1934 Bridgeman Images/Fotodom
Marcel Breuer. Armchair in birch plywood with velvet upholstery. 1936 Bridgeman Images/Fotodom
The painting and fresco workshop was headed by Wassily Kandinsky, stained glass painting by Paul Klee, metalworking by the Hungarian artist and art theorist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Thanks to El Lissitzky El Lissitzky- artist, architect, one of the leaders of the Soviet avant-garde and a key figure in the history of Soviet-European cultural relations in the 1920s. in the Bauhaus they learned about the Suprematist compositions of Kazimir Malevich. The ideologist of the Dutch avant-garde Theo van Doesburg gave lectures in which the ideas of the De Stil group were presented "De style"- an art association created in 1917 in Leiden with the participation of the Dutch avant-garde artists - artists and architects Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Jacobs Aud, Robert van't Hoff and others..
The school existed until 1933: with the coming to power of the National Socialists, it was closed, but the former teachers and their numerous followers used the methods developed at the Bauhaus for a long time. The Bauhaus had a huge impact on the development of typography, furniture design, textiles, clothing, and yet architecture remained the discipline that united all areas of the experiment. Using the example of five projects, we will explain how the main discoveries of the Bauhaus have changed the perception of the modern urban environment, architecture, design and creativity in general.
1. Bauhaus building in Dessau, Germany (1925)
Bauhaus building in Dessau. 1928 Getty Images
Bauhaus students. 1928 Bridgeman Images/Fotodom
Johannes Itten. Early 1920s Wikimedia Commons
In 1925 the school had to move from Weimar to Dessau. The new building, a kind of early Bauhaus manifesto, was designed by Walter Gropius himself. Each functional area had its own volume-spatial solution and was easily determined by its appearance. There were many functions in a single complex, because in the Bauhaus students lived and worked together. The school-factory combined classrooms, craft workshops, canteens, and classrooms. The dormitory was located in a multi-storey tower building; separate houses were built for teachers. Interiors and furniture, utensils, fabric drawings were made by students and teachers themselves. In everything, pure geometrized forms were emphasized; walls, furniture, household items were the main colors of the spectrum - red, blue and yellow.
Some rooms were easily transformed: the partition was removed, and the dining room turned into a dance floor. Theatrical performances also took place there: every week, students and teachers held parties, took pictures in strange masks invented by the artist Oskar Schlemmer, marched with red flags, publicly painted the statues of Goethe and Schiller. Girls cut their hair short, boys, on the contrary, grew their hair. Eyewitnesses recall that the inhabitants of Dessau complained about provocative clothing, night baths and noisy festivities, and mothers warned their daughters when students passed by: "Don't look, they are from the Bauhaus!"
Gropius created a unique creative atmosphere that was previously unimaginable in educational institution. In the Bauhaus was invented new type art student - freedom-loving, neglecting traditional conventions. In some ways, the movement resembled a monastic order (the Swiss artist Johannes Itten, one of the founders and teachers of the school, wore an almost monastic robe and began lectures with breathing exercises and meditations); something like the artistic space of the 1960s: rebellious, challenging the established social order.
2 Sonneveld House in Rotterdam, Netherlands (1932-1933)
Sonneveld's house. 1930s The New Institute Collection, BIHS Separate household items - furniture, dishes, fabrics, wallpapers - invented by students and teachers of the Bauhaus, became commercially successful: production was put on stream, advertisements were published in special catalogs. However, it turned out to be much more difficult to consistently implement new methods in an architectural project: it was necessary to find not only a wealthy, but also a progressive customer. Even from what was nevertheless built, very few residential buildings have come down to us, well preserved and with authentic furnishings. The Sonneveld House in Rotterdam is a rare exception. It was designed by the Dutch architect Lendert van der Vlugt, who did not teach at school, but shared the views of Gropius and his associates. Some pieces of furniture for the home were designed by Bauhaus teacher Erich Dieckmann.
Luxurious for its time, the mansion of the director of the Van Nelle tobacco factory, Albertus Sonneveld, today seems modest and monastically ascetic. small rooms, narrow corridors, smooth painted walls, linoleum coverings. This is a characteristic feature of the Bauhaus - in almost all the early projects of the functionalists Functionalism- a trend that became widespread in European architecture in the 1920s and 30s. The creative method of the functionalists is based on the principle of conformity between form and content, when the function of the room determines what its external architectural design will be like. The functionalists relied on new building possibilities with the use of reinforced concrete structures, consciously emphasizing the modernity of the chosen materials. Any decorative "decoration" (traditional stucco, cornices, pilasters, etc.) seemed unacceptable to them. The functional method was also used in the Bauhaus. square meters per person are calculated extremely sparingly, as if the cabins of transatlantic liners or train compartments were a guide for them, a technique also used by Le Corbusier.
Contrary to the revolutionary social precepts of the Bauhaus, the Sonneveld house is a completely bourgeois product. Sonneveld's wife, Gezine Sonneveld-Bos, had excellent taste, she loved luxury and radically new, outrageous things. Every detail of the house, from furniture and built-in appliances to bedside lamps and soap dishes, was made according to an individual project. Linoleum, aluminum, rubber were new, and therefore expensive materials. The house was filled with all sorts of technical innovations: synchronized clocks, telephones and radios in all rooms, thermostats, a food lift.
Much of the design of the house was inspired by travel on the Holland America Line (like) - from American Standard plumbing and Pullman chairs In 1867, the American inventor George Pullman founded a company producing luxury passenger cars - with luxurious chairs, as well as sleeping compartments, furnished no worse than rooms in expensive hotels. before music players. The layout of the building is based on the everyday life of a respectable family: the house has a servants' area, a reception room and a garage. The master bathroom and dressing room are much larger than the rest of the rooms. In the Bauhaus they hoped that the well-appointed modern kitchen will facilitate the work of a woman, but in the case of the Sonneveld house, the hostess did not need to be released from work: the cook did it.
3. General plan of Birobidzhan (1933)
Draft design of the layout of Birobidzhan. Written by Hannes Meyer. 1932 thecharnelhouse.org
Birobidzhan. 1933 thecharnelhouse.org
In the USSR, they knew about the Bauhaus experiments thanks to the First Exhibition of Modern Architecture, which was held in Moscow in 1927. In the early 1930s, dozens of foreign architects believed in the grandiose change promised by the young Soviet government and began working on model workers' settlements in the Urals and Siberia. In the context of rapid industrialization, construction had to be fast and economical. By inviting foreign experts, Soviet officials counted on assistance in developing socially new types of housing (dormitories, cultural centers, apartment buildings with public economic and leisure zones), on the experience of a standardized building and the creation of an infra-structure for in-line conveyor production.
The social aspect of architecture was very important to the architects working at the Bauhaus: many of them shared the extreme left. Political Views. Therefore, the revolutionary changes that occurred in the artistic and social life of the USSR in the 1920s and early 1930s were accepted with great enthusiasm. The urgent construction of entire villages and cities was possible only with the help of standard serial production, and any mass construction required approved norms and standards. A prime example serves as the master plan of Birobidzhan, which was worked on by the second director of the Bauhaus, Hannes Meyer, who headed the design and planning bureau No. 7 of the Giprogor Institute, created specifically to develop master plans for the development and development of new cities and towns. In the concept formulated by Meyer, which he later called the "New Building Theory", the main role was given to questions of the function and organization of urban space. In typical micro-districts, it was clearly thought out in advance where to live, where to study, where to talk with friends, where to play sports. The architect saw himself as a builder of a happy future, uniting people, trying to develop universal, the only true rules of a new life. Like endless ranks at a military parade, line by line, residential blocks of houses lined up. These early modernist attempts to build a functional city with its extremely laconic formulas and uncompromising social prescriptions were only partially realized, but anticipated the concept of the Soviet industrial city - the socialist city.
Hannes Meyer and his colleagues were disappointed: the low level of qualifications of local workers, the lack of building materials, the lack of basic office supplies, the maddening bureaucratic dystopia - up to the car prescribed in the contract, which "for some reason is always busy" , as the German architect Ernst May wrote in one of his explanatory notes. Many architects were forced to leave the country because of the harsh reaction to all experimental directions of the first post-revolutionary decade. However, the solutions proposed by them were perceived as a promising way for the development of modern urban planning for a long time. These ideas also influenced the development of European cities after the Second World War, in the 1940s and 50s.
4. "White City" in Tel Aviv (1931-1937)
Tel Aviv. 1930s–1940sTaken either by the American Colony Photo Department or its successor, the Matson Photo Service / Library of Congress
Tel Aviv. 1930s–1940sTaken either by the American Colony Photo Department or its successor, the Matson Photo Service / Library of Congress
Tel Aviv in the 1930s proved to be the perfect place for clean-slate architecture. In 1909, the future city was just a small garden outskirts of Jaffa. The development was chaotic, the architectural appearance was formed under the influence of partly European eclecticism Eclecticism- direction in the architecture of the XIX century. The eclectic method offers a mixture of different historical styles. partly local traditions. Everything changed during the Fifth Aliyah Alia(from the word "rise", "ascent") - the process of repatriation to Palestine, since 1948 - to Israel. The fifth aliyah is the period 1929-1939. when, after the Nazis came to power in Germany, about 250,000 Jews moved to Palestine. Among them were many architects who studied at the Bauhaus: Shlomo Berenstein, Arieh Sharon, Shmuel Mistechkin. By the early 1930s, Tel Aviv had a unique urban planning situation: general enthusiasm and national enthusiasm, rapid population growth and an urgent need for new residential quarters. At the same time, there was no historical urban context, and therefore, there was complete freedom for creative experimentation. Between 1931 and 1937, more than 3,000 buildings were erected in Tel Aviv, which consistently embodied the doctrine of the Bauhaus.
The architects who built the “White City” (the district later received its name for the light tone of most of the facades) adapted to the local climatic conditions. Due to constant sunlight, sweltering heat and high humidity, large glazed surfaces and wide strips of ribbon windows had to be abandoned and the techniques traditional for the construction practice of the Middle East were used. This is how the interior courtyards, wells, patios, arcades, ventilation hatches, mashrabiyas appeared in the projects. Mashrabiya - protruding from the wall and covered with a wooden or stone carved lattice - "veil" ventilation window; a common element in traditional stone buildings in the Middle East.- in a word, everything that facilitates access fresh air and creates an additional shadow.
Functional planning meant designing "from the inside out": first of all, the architect had to think over the interior space, convenient placement of residential, public and economic areas. Hence the complex compositions of multi-storey volumes, various forms window openings(square, tape, L-shaped). The appearance of the building is dictated by the features interior layout and purpose of premises. Effective combination volumes of different sizes, dazzling white plaster, play of contrasting shadows - on the scale of several blocks, the new architecture made a strong impression. Some houses were elongated buildings, others, on the contrary, were more compact. An expressive plastic accent was the rounded balconies that decorated the corners of the buildings. Many houses were equipped with special canopies, balconies, ventilation slots (thermometer windows), and additional visors. The ledges and niches, catching the sea breeze, increased the draft, which also helped to lower the temperature in the apartments. Gardens, pergolas were arranged on flat roofs order architecture — classical method architectural design, based on the ancient order system. or the simplest decor, were perceived by modernist architects Modernism- a trend in architecture that has been developed since the beginning of the 20th century. Modernism unites many schools and trends. main feature modernist approach - orientation to the new and technologically progressive. Modernism is characterized by the revolutionary pathos of transforming the world, purifying it of social and artistic remnants. as an unacceptable, even immoral method. Modernism followed the path of purification, total simplification of design. This is how the international style was born in its classic, Americanized version - thanks to Walter Gropius (taught at Harvard), Marcel Breuer (opened his own bureau in New York), Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (founded the New Bauhaus in Chicago). The “eldest” of the international style was the third director of the school, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose most famous works are the German pavilion in Barcelona (1929), the house of Edith Farnsworth (“ Glass House”, 1951), the Seagram Building in New York (1958). In fact, in each glass parallelepiped of any office building his legacy is recognized all over the world. Van der Rohe literally creates spaces of silence, embodying his main principle, which has become an architectural credo for thousands of architects and designers of the 20th century: "Less is more." Perhaps the most justified embodiment of this formula was the Glass House, built for Dr. Edith Farnsworth. Despite a quarrel with the customer caused by an increase in the estimate and an underpaid fee, the architect created one of the most clear and concise architectural works of the century. The building is practically reduced to a skeleton, assembled from thin supports and floor slabs. The facades are turned into windows through which daylight evenly penetrates. It is difficult to come up with something more anti-go-no-stylish architecture of the past than the complete overcoming of the boundaries of the building and the destruction of its mass.
Sources
- Gropius W. boundaries of architecture.
- Ikonnikov A.V. Architecture of the 20th century: Utopias and reality: in 2 volumes.
- Banham R. Theory and Design in the First Machine Age.
Cambridge, 1980.
- Bullock N. Living with History: 1914–1964: Rebuilding Europe after the First and Second World Wars and the Role of Preservation.
- Droste M. Bauhaus, 1919-1933.
- Giedion S. Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition.
Harvard University Press, 1967.
- Pearlman J.E. Inventing American Modernism: Joseph Hudnut, Walter Gropius, and the Bauhaus Legacy at Harvard.
University of Virginia Press, 2007.
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- Siebenbrodt M., Reissinger E. Bauhaus Weimar: Designs for the Future.
All design ever created by mankind does not arise from nothing and does not disappear without a trace. The appearance of objects that today surround both middle managers and bohemian artists is no exception. In a new series of materials, Platfor.ma will look into the roots of contemporary design. Let's start with one of the main trends - the school of simplicity and functionality - the Bauhaus, which defined the design of Apple and Ikea.
Bauhaus-Dessau school building
The Bauhaus, as a higher school of construction and artistic design, was founded and headed by Walter Gropius in 1919, an artist and craftsman rolled into one. The main concept of the school was the combination of art with construction equipment, and the ideology was the responsibility of the designer to the individual, society and the development of culture in general.
From 1919 to 1925 the school existed in Weimar (Germany), then in 1926 it moved to Dessau. It was there that Gropius designed the school building, which is still considered a masterpiece of functionalist architecture. Interior and internal equipment were created by the students and teachers of the school.
Walter Gropius - German architect, founder of the Bauhaus.
The teachers were creatively bold, active, obsessed with finding new ideas. They shared Gropius' views on the unity of art and craft. "The artist is only highest degree craftsman,” he said. The best representatives of art of the 20th century taught at the Bauhaus: Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
The core of the training was the idea of medieval craft workshops, which worked on the principle of "master - apprentice - apprentice". At the beginning, students studied the basics of crafts and the properties of materials, and the main task was to move away from the classical perception of art as separate forms, to bring together all its types, from painting to architecture. The applied part included experiments with the shape of the raw material, its properties and work with mechanisms. At the same time, the theory of color, pattern, and form was constantly studied and deepened.
In 1928, after Gropius, the school was headed by Hannes Mayer. He brought to educational process two new disciplines: economics and psychology. In the workshops of the school, Mayer set up mass production of furniture and interior details, the main principles of which were cheapness and a minimum number of parts. Due to the inexpensive production of the most functional things, all segments of the population could afford them. In general, an incredible number of interior items, dishes, furniture, posters were created within the walls of the school, which eventually began to represent the Bauhaus as a style.
Bauhaus by Magdalena Droste
“Most design artifacts throughout almost the entire period of human life have had one common feature: they were made for the rich and powerful.
After the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and a couple of financial crises, suddenly there was a huge field of design activity - the creation of products that are much better than without design, but not more expensive to manufacture.
Products whose attractiveness is not created by additional work (for example, external ornamentation, which takes time to apply), but by the inherent properties of the object. Everything - to create items that even people who are unsecured can afford. A characteristic example of this avalanche is the Bauhaus.
But despite this, in Dessau, the school was treated with hostility, which led to an almost complete reduction in subsidies. In 1932, the new director of the school, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, "moved" the Bauhaus and opened it as a private enterprise in Berlin. But the very next year, with the growing influence of the Nazis, the school had to be closed as a "hotbed of communism." Many teachers were forced to hide from persecution and emigrated to the United States.
Originating in Germany, the Bauhaus as a style had a huge impact not only in Europe. In America, his ideas were successfully developed by architects and designers Charles and Ray Eames. In 1929, after spending his honeymoon in Europe, Charles Eames first became acquainted with the work of the school. Returning home, he founded an architectural bureau in St. Louis, where the ideas of the Bauhaus were already promoted in the United States. However, the work of Eames deserves a separate article.
Eames Aluminum Group Executive Chair Eames Molded Plywood Dining Chair Eames Wire Chairs
The school lasted only 14 years, but the style and ideas of people who firmly believed in the simplicity of form and functionalism made a huge contribution to the culture not only of that time, but also to the design and architecture of our time.
LE1 loudspeaker, 1960. Design: Dieter Rams. Manufacturer: Brown
Now this ideology of functionality and simplicity of form is most pronounced in Scandinavian graphic design and architecture. In clothing, Bauhaus ideas can be found in the normcore style, and in industrial design at Apple and Ikea.
For example, the first Apple catalog opened with the words "Simplicity is the limit of perfection." And Steve Jobs himself said that the ideal product is the basic essence and simplicity without frills.
The basic principles of the Bauhaus can be expressed as follows:
The artist must be a craftsman, without separation from manual labor and technology;
You need to learn related professions, not get hung up on studying a narrow specialization;
Simplicity of form and functionality is the foundation of good design;
One should learn from masters who have applied knowledge of the discipline;
Design industrial buildings and systems with high social and cultural responsibility
Everything is simple and ingenious. Like the Bauhaus itself
bauhaus style appeared in Germany. The advantage of this design is the low cost of furniture and finishing materials. And without any extra frills.
This direction appeared at the beginning of the last century and influenced the mass production of mass-produced pieces of furniture..
Style history
The history of the Bauhaus style is amazing. It appeared in Germany in 1919, but it has features of Russian constructivism, geometricism and cubism.
Translated from german word Bauhaus means building a house. Initially, this word was called the Higher School of Construction and Design, on the basis of which a whole direction arose.
The architect Walter Gropius, having become the head of the school of construction, proposed the use of combinations of industrial production possibilities and simple and aesthetic forms.
The central idea of this direction was the creation of an interior in which there are no decorative details that do not have a functional value.
The elements in the room have regular and rectangular shapes. The main goal of the style was the creation of a practical and functional home and the rejection of pretentious and luxurious elements.
At the very beginning of the development of this direction, the following ideas were embodied in life:
- The minimum number of decorative elements.
- The use of machine technology.
- Combination of design and industry solutions.
- Practicality and versatility.
Many features were borrowed from Art Nouveau. This direction has found application in private design and in large architectural projects.
In the field of construction, some innovations were introduced: the lightness and conciseness of building forms and the flexibility of architectural structures.
The creators of the direction sought to mass-produce comfortable and beautiful pieces of furniture. At the same time, modern materials and developments were used in the products.
The Bauhaus architectural style was characterized by the use of the principle of standardization of residential buildings. The architects of the school were engaged in the development of projects for industrial settlements.
Three-four-story apartment buildings were erected for employees and workers with a low level of income. At the same time, the apartments were two or three-room with a kitchen and a bathroom. They were designed for a family of 5-6 people.
Style Features
The Bauhaus has survived to the present day. The central idea of the style is simplicity and functionality. At the same time, furniture and decor details should not only have an attractive appearance, but also comfort in operation and affordable cost.
In the production of interior items, the principle of rational consumption of material is welcomed.
There are the following features of the Bauhaus architectural style:
- The use of repeating symmetrical elements and asymmetric shapes.
- The use of functional details with a minimum amount of ornament.
- Full use of space.
The decoration of the room is not decor and accessories, but high-quality Appliances and well planned lighting.
The interior in this style suggests. It was in this direction that different lighting for individual zones was originally used.
Separate features can be seen in the style of hi-tech, minimalism or modern.
The interior involves the use of forged and metal elements and glass items.
Furniture, materials and color in the interior
From its inception to the present, the Bauhaus has been constantly developed and improved. The main task of the style is to create a simple design that matches the spirit of the times.
Distinctive features of furniture
Furniture in this style should be of high quality, but affordable. At the same time, it is not the color of the upholstery that is valued, but the ease of use.
For the first time in the Bauhaus style, furniture was made of metal. In this school, the idea arose to use a bent metal tube for the frame of furniture. The first items of modular and transformable furniture appeared.
Furniture of this style has the following features:
- Lack of decorative elements.
- Clear and concise geometric shapes.
- Simplicity and comfort of use.
- Armchairs are made without handles.
- Use of built-in and spacious wardrobes.
- The chairs are made of bent steel tubes and seated with canvas or leather cushions.
Transformable types of furniture are popular - tables and chairs that retract into each other, collapsible cabinets and stools.
Particular attention is paid to the improvement working area in the kitchen.
Color palette
The color scheme of this style is neutral shades: gray, beige, white and black. To create accents, bright spots of blue, green, red or yellow color. The use of light shades allows. Of the ornaments, geometric prints and abstract painting are used.
The color palette in the Bauhaus is a combination of warm and cold shades. Light plaster and stone are diluted with the warmth of wood, and the coldness of stele and metal is diluted with textile and leather products.
Materials and finishing works
Of the materials in the interior, metal, plastic, glass, leather and wood are used. Finishing work characterized by simplicity. The walls are decorated with plaster or wallpaper with geometric configurations. Small and scattered drawings are popular. Such wallpaper is easy to glue, since it is not necessary to adjust the strips. A small pattern visually creates a more spacious room.
The interior of the room is recognizable by the following features:
- The presence of geometric shapes: squares, rectangles and circles.
- The space is emphasized by diagonal lines and asymmetrical shapes.
- As floor covering linoleum with neutral ornaments is used. Suitable material with imitation of wood or metal.
- Smooth and monochrome surfaces predominate.
- As decor, stylish household appliances and bright light sources are used that highlight separate zones premises.
Interior features include high ceilings, design in the same plane of the horizontal direction and an abundance of light. Of the vertical elements, elongated and narrow window openings are used.
The Bauhaus style connected the realm of art and technology. Bauhaus ideas influenced design and architecture modern houses and individual rooms. An important feature of style is functionality. Creating an interior in the Bauhaus style involves the work of technologists, artisans and artists for one result.