Bauhaus

The Bauhaus is certainly the most influential movement in design in the last century. Actually, without the Bauhaus and its teachers and students, comprised of not only engineers or businessmen but also artists, we wouldn't see the flat-roofed buildings, the smooth white Braun kitchen appliances, among other things.

The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany, with the utopian determination to change art education and society as a whole. It is relevant here to mention the Belgian Henry van de Velde, who had founded the School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar in 1907, where the young architect Gropius became a brilliant figure. It won't be exaggerated to say that van de Velde paved the way for the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus could be seen as a continuation of the work of the school founded in Weimar which encouraged the employment of designers in industry in an attempt to raise the standard of design in German industry (Whitford p. 20).

As the political conditions changed in Germany the Bauhaus was obliged to adapt its direction, adopting more realistic goals. The imperatives of technical civilization made it necessary for the school to rethink its "Romantic notions of artistic self-expression" and in 1923 it made important changes to its program, which was a sort of a new start under the new principles unifying art and technology. In this new Bauhaus technology was employed in designing the products, in both the functional and aesthetic aspects.

In 1925 the school was forced to move to Dessau, where it started to become renowned, after Weimar's new nationalist government stopped its financial support. Gropius resigned and Hannes Meyer took control in 1928, the latter also left two years later. Political differences again made the school leave Dessau to