"The mind is like an umbrella. It is most useful when
open.
Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual
nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life,
necessary for
everyone in a civilized society."
Walter Gropius
Today Google Doodles (along with the
entire Modernist design world) celebrates the 100th anniversary
of the opening of the Bauhaus School of applied
arts, architecture and design.
it later moved to Dessau (1932) and briefly to Berlin,
where reactionary political movements
forced it to close.
arts, architecture and design.
Spearheaded by famed German architect Walter Gropius,
the school opened on April 12, 1919 in Weimar, Germany; it later moved to Dessau (1932) and briefly to Berlin,
where reactionary political movements
forced it to close.
Bauhaus came into being during a period of liberal upheaval following
Germany’s defeat in the First World War and the establishment of the
Weimar Republic, which prompted radical artistic experimentation. Gropius’ vision was for a school uniting all branches of the arts under one roof, incorporating
architecture and graphics.
Gropius House
Lincoln, Massachusetts
Gropius designed this as his family home when he came to teach
architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.
It is open to visitors; for details see
https://www.historicnewengland.org/property/gropius-house/
architecture and graphics.
Lincoln, Massachusetts
Gropius designed this as his family home when he came to teach
architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.
It is open to visitors; for details see
https://www.historicnewengland.org/property/gropius-house/
• Precepts of Bauhaus
Less is more: form follows function
Lack of fussy ornamentation
Harmony of design and function
Intelligent use of resources, with a zero-waste ideal in mind
Always classic, always new.
~ oOo ~
A great place to see Bauhaus architecture is
Tel Aviv's White City. Tel Aviv, built about 100 years ago by
architects and designers who had fled the Nazis, has been designated
a World Cultural Heritage site by UNESCO. (The Nazis
had deemed Modernism to be "decadent, intellectual Jewish trash.)
The exiled architects arrived
in Israel just as the establishment and construction of modern Tel Aviv
was taking place; thus the Bauhaus (or "International")
style found full
expression there. Nearly all of Tel Aviv's White City
was built during
the years spanning the late 1920s through the mid-1950s.
For more information about touring the White City,
check out my article in PRIME magazine
~ oOo ~
