Bauhaus Movement

The Bauhaus was a German school of design from 1919 to 1933. It was a movement that was strongly influenced by the outcomes of World War One and rejected the ideals of the past and embraced the age of the machine. By focusing on the materials and the eradication of superfluous decoration, the Bauhaus established a new ideal, which was, form following function. Through their manipulation of established and new products this enabled them to emphasise the very ‘materiality’ of the items they produced. They simplified design, rejoiced in the quintessential embodiment of the elements and deliberately did not attempt to hide any constructional components. No longer was there a standard response to these elements, as the importance of the material itself emerged. Although relatively short lived, this movement had a major impact on world architecture and design, which is still evident today.

The school existed in three German cities: Weimar from 1919 to 1925, Dessau from 1925 to 1932 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 until 1933, when the school was closed by its own leadership under pressure from the Nazi regime. The Nazi government claimed that it was a centre of communist intellectualism. Though the school was closed, the staff continued to spread its idealistic precepts as they left Germany and emigrated all over the world.[2]
The changes of venue and leadership resulted in a constant shifting of focus, technique, instructors, and politics. For instance: the pottery shop was discontinued when the school moved from Weimar to Dessau, even though it had been an important revenue source; when Mies van der Rohe took over the school in 1930, he transformed it into a private school, and would not allow any supporters of Hannes Meyer to attend it.

The paradox of the early Bauhaus was that, although its manifesto proclaimed that