Bauhaus

Résumé du livre

The Bauhaus was a design school established in Germany from 1919 to 1933. It was founded by the architect Walter Gropius and based on the idea of architecture as the link between arts and crafts. The mission of the Bauhaus was to reject the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement in favor of design for machine production to produce functional yet attractive objects for broad society rather than for wealthy individuals. However, the school did link art and design in their studio-workshops to allow experimentation in adopting crafted prototypes to industrial design. Although the workshops were crucial to the organization of the school, the importance of the preliminary course was evident. Taught by luminaries including Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, and László Moholy-Nagy, the course prepared students for the more specialized workshops. Here students were taught both by artists as form givers and by craftspeople skilled in techniques. The school was beset by political wrangling and in its later years it saw various changes of staff and leadership. The rise to power of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party led to withdrawal of funding and hostility toward the school and its teaching practices, culminating in its closure in 1933. However, the school had wide-ranging influence in design and pedagogy. The New Bauhaus (later renamed the Institute of Design) was established in Chicago in 1937, and Walter Gropius was appointed chairman of the Harvard School of Architecture in the same year. In 1938 Mies van der Rohe moved to Chicago to head the Department of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology.