Bauhaus Movement Essay

The Bauhaus movement, founded by Walter Gropius in 1919, which birthed the Bauhaus building was an influential movement in the Modernism era. The key characteristics of the Bauhaus movement were anti-historicism, clean and geometric shapes and forms and simplistic design. (Bauhaus, 2016) Walter Gropius had a great vision for the Bauhaus movement and aimed to make design and art a social concern during the post-war turmoil. The movement was a contemporary movement and sought out to be rid of the previous culture and believed in anti-historicism. However, the opposition of the cultures and traditions did give the Bauhaus movement an enemy, which will be mentioned at a later stage in the essay.

Historical Background

Bauhaus was very much a big

In the reading “Introduction to Modernism in Design’’ by Paul Greenhalgh, he mentions 12 theoretical features which characterised Modernisms activity before the International Style. Decompartmentalisation was perhaps one of the most important ideals to the Bauhaus style. They meant for the Decompartmentalisation of the human experience. This being said the Bauhaus school did not make an effort against the alienation of the people at the time. (Houze, Lees-Maffei, 2010). There was the Decompartmentalisation between designers and decorators

This meant to create complete social morality in the sense that their way of design and art was aimed to improve society and the situation in which they found themselves in at that time. With the quote “It [architecture] is a thesis, a declaration, a statement of the social aims of the age”. (Lubetkin, 1947) This statement exemplifies the ideals of modernism and Bauhaus. It is essentially stating that Bauhaus was created as a form of design of which was working in a contemporary context. However what Bauhaus had not taken into account was the impoverishment of the people’s psyche. This was happening to a person's psyche when they did not have a job due to the alienation of a human workforce in the industrial sector. They found themselves as victims of capitalism. Which the Bauhaus school taught when they taught their students to create mass produced art and designs. (Houze, Lees-Maffei, 2010). With this being

Technology played a sizeable role in the designs that Bauhaus created as they were partially influenced by the industrial revolution. An example of their designs which used technology to be created is the actual Bauhaus building itself, which was of course designed by Walter Gropius. Walter Gropius was a tremendous believer in the ideals of Bauhaus and he wanted to create a building which demonstrated their ideals. The building was created using various advancements in the technological and engineering fields. The Bauhaus style was the first style to create entire building face that was glass. As fore mentioned this was accomplished by using the skeleton structure. They also used ribbed forms along the windows as one of the first ways to create a form of insulation that was