FORM FOLLOW FUNCTIONan exploration of modernism and post modernism

24/4/13

The Bauhaus, founded in Weimar 1919 by Walter Gropius, was Germany's most famous and most avant-garde art and design school. The Bauhaus Building in Dessau was constructed based on designs by Walter Gropius in 1925/26.

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Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts In spite of its name, and the fact that its founder was an architect, the Bauhaus did not have an architecture

department during the first years of its existence. Nonetheless it was founded with the idea of creating a "total" work of art in which all arts, including architecture, would eventually be brought together. The Bauhaus style became one of the most influential currents in Modernist architecture and modern design. The Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography.

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Walter Gropius(May 18, 1883 – July 5, 1969)

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Walter Gropius studied architecture between 1903 and 1907 in Munich and Berlin. From 1908 to 1910

Walter Gropius worked for Peter Behrens, in whose practice the seminal AEG Tubine Hall of concrete, steel, and glass was planned and built. From 1910 Gropius had his own architecture practice in Berlin. In 1911 Gropius designed the Fagus Works in Alfeld. Wal-ter Gropius was a member of the Deutscher Werkbund from 1910, where he joined Henry van de Velde in his initial efforts to counter standardization of design and promote individual creativity.

In 1908 Walter Gropius was invited to head the school for the applied arts Henry van de Velde founded in Weimar. Although Gropius did not take up the appoint-ment and the school closed in 1915, Walter Gropius kept in contact with Weimar. It was Walter Gropius who designed the concept for merging the "Kunst-gewerbeschule" with the "Hochschule der Bildenden Künste" to found a teaching facility that would operate as a consultancy for industry, commerce and crafts.

That laid the cornerstone for the "State Bauhaus", which was founded in Weimar in 1919, with the charis-matic Gropius as its first director. The first three teach-ers Gropius hired for the "Bauhaus" were the artists Johannes Itten, Gerhard Marcks and Lyonel Feininger; they would be followed by Georg Muche, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky, Josef Albers, and László Moholy-Nagy.

The "Bauhaus" curriculum consisted in preliminary courses and practical training in workshops. The work-shops were to be laboratories for developing models "ripe for mass production, implements typical of the present day".

When the "Bauhaus" in Weimar encountered political resistance from the authorities, Walter Gropius was forced to look for a new site. In 1925 the "Bauhaus" moved to Dessau into the new Bauhaus Building and Masters' Houses designed by Walter Gropius and built in 1925-26.

Walter Gropius gave up his position as director in 1927 but the Bauhaus existed until 1933. In 1934 Walter Gropius went to England but in 1937 he was invited to teach at Harvard. In 1938 Walter Gropius brought Marcel Breuer to Harvard and founded a joint architec-ture practice with him. Gropius' own house built by the practice attracted numerous commissions for private houses. With Breuer Walter Gropius also built the Penn-sylvania Pavilion for the 1939 New York World's Fair. In 1946 Walter Gropius founded "The Architects Col-laborative" (TAC), with which he realized a great many projects.

If your contribution has been vital there will always be somebody to pick up where you left off, and that will be your claim to immortality

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