Bauhaus

Contextual Studies:
Today’s notes:
The Bauhaus: The machines, the lines, the new

History:
Late 19th century – Victorian Architecture and Interior Design
Russian Revolution – 1917
Take over victorian-style houses and sweeping away the old styles, wanting the new
WW1 1914-1918: The Defeat of Germany
Beginning of the End of Aristocracy
Modern Art had already responded to this with Abstraction
New subject matter, from scenery to people and machines
Russian Suprematism
stripped of all previous artistic components, highly radical, search for purity and the sublime, the idea that straight lines were better than curves
Mondrian and De Stijl (Artists that moved from their old style to Abstraction)
Furniture changed from carved puffy Victorian armchairs that cannot be mass produced to sleek rectangular chairs that can be manufactured (but lacks the human element(not comfy!))

Bauhaus is an art school in Dessau, Germany, believing in Utopia and remaking the world through art (applying fine art ideas into design)
Blur the line between art and craft
Making the world a better place for common people
The Aesthetic side of the Machine Age
Not just cheap and easy, but it is also beautiful
The design of the Bauhaus building took the rising and setting of the sun into consideration to fully optimize it’s function and use
No excess components in design, geometric and interlocking shapes, mechanical themes, industrial materials
Downsides to the Bauhaus:
They restricted student’s creative thinking process (at most primary colors, no curves or circles, must be really simplistic etc)
The Bauhaus building was not equipped to take care of human comfort (too hot during the summer, too cold during the winter etc)

Bauhaus Legacy:
Various modern designs based off the rectangular shapes and geometry that Bauhaus thrived for
Nowadays architects and designers take the characteristics of Bauhaus (Aiming for simplicity, aesthetics mixed with the easily manufactured, function first over elegant beauty) and try to push it further
Some architects like Zaha Hadid worked away from it