Bauhaus Essay

In the following essay I will discuss how the Bauhaus changed the way design was thought forever. Educators such as Johannes Itten, Gerhard Marcks and Hannes Meyers were significant in the shaping of the Bauhaus’s education system. Although their attitudes towards education differed, they worked together to bring a change to the world. I will also discuss the graduates; Josef Albers and Annie Albers, their work and how the Bauhaus influenced them.

In 1919, something radical changed the way both design and craft was to be thought forevermore. The Bauhaus was a school of design, which was founded by a Werkbund member known as Walter Gropius. Gropius was thirty-six when he conceived the idea for the Bauhaus, after watching fellow Werkbund member, Henry Van de Velde, establish an arts and crafts school in Weimar, Germany. In 1919 Gropius became head of the arts and crafts school that Henry Van de Velde founded. Gropius proceeded to reorganize the school and then renamed it to be known as the Bauhaus.

The Bauhaus was a product of the arts and crafts movement of the late 19th century. The movement encouraged artists and designers to create anything from jewellery to buildings by bringing together traditional craft methods to a clear analysis of form and function. This is what the Bauhaus was set out to achieve, an understanding of both form and design. Gropius designed the teaching practices around this understanding.

The teaching practices that were involved in the Bauhaus were based around the idea of having two types of educators. One would have been more artistically minded, masters of form. The second was more technical, workshop masters. Gropius made the first appointments once his directorship was confirmed. His first appoin...

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...ave had as a significant impact on the world. All of the masters travelled the world and thought in other schools and brought their experiences and knowledge to the rest of the world. It was as if the Bauhaus was a dandelion, the wind was WWII and the seeds were the masters being distributed around the world, planting the beliefs of the Bauhaus in the world.

The Bauhaus introduced many things the world was never exposed to. New building methods and also new ways to design furniture. Steel construction, steel tubular chairs, lightweight construction, iron craft, flexible objects such as lamps and many other revolutionary ideas that have changed the world. The mix between art and architecture is thought worldwide in all architecture schools, but also the strong relationship between the two practices. Gropius united them in the Bauhaus and brought that to the world.