From Bauhaus To Our House Analysis

From Bauhaus to Our House by Tom Wolfe Tom Wolfe’s scathing short From Bauhaus to Our House obliterates modernist architecture in 111 pages of sarcasm, wit, and an unyielding frustration with everything modern. In the blink of an eye, American architecture transformed into a collection of glass, steel, and concrete boxes. The International style had the U.S. in it’s anti bourgeois grip, and was not letting go anytime soon. Wolfe, with his personal preference to ornate structures, detested modern architecture and the international style. Wolfe goes in depth about the history Modern architecture, and the ideals behind it, as well as the negative impact on American artist and architecture that he believed it had. Modern architecture was born out of Germany in 1919 with creation of the Bauhaus school by Walter Gropius. World World I had just ended and the country was in shambles, which sparked the architectural ideology of “starting from zero.” It was time to rebuild Germany from the

Philip Johnson was in fact the head of the architecture division for the Museum of Modern Art. Wolfe found the piece almost laughable as they tried to set up a distinction between architecture and building and mocked American skyscrapers. The Europeans claimed to walk away from commissions of the sort, yet Wolfe saw no shame in taking commissions and granting the public what they want. Johnson and Hitchcock also analyzed and praised the “functionalist” designs of the Europeans. Wolfe highlights the fact that while the Europeans claim to be purely functional and for the working class, they pay little or no attention to the workers’ opinions and that some of the typically modernist designs, such as flat roofs that trap rain and snow on the top, are actually highly