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The “Deutscher Werkbund”
The Deutscher Werkbund (German Association of Craftsmen), founded in
Munich in 1907, was composed of artists, artisans, and architects who designed
industrial, commercial, and household products, as well as practicing
architecture.
Its initial purpose was to establish a partnership of product manufacturers with professional
designers to improve the competitiveness of German companies in global markets.
Its motto Vom Sofakissen zum Städtebau
(from sofa cushions to city-building)
indicates its range of interest.
The Deutscher Werkbund proposed a new culture of industrial labor, according to which, for
each project, it is necessary to analyse:
production costs,
quality craftsmanship,
manner and time of production.
The group’s intellectual leaders, architects Hermann
Muthesius and Henry van de Velde, were influenced by
William Morris, who, as the leader of the 19th-century English
Arts and Crafts Movement, proposed to revive industrial
craftmanship as a collaborative enterprise of designers and
craftsmen.
Van de Velde and Muthesius expanded Morris’ ideas to include
machine-made goods. They also proposed that only the
function should determine the form and that ornamentation
should be eliminated.
Soon after the Werkbund was founded, it was divided in two
factions.
One, championed by Muthesius, advocated the greatest
possible use of mechanical mass production and standardized
design.
The other faction, headed by van de Velde, supported the value
of individual artistic expression.
The Werkbund adopted Muthesius’ ideas in 1914.
Muthesius (1861-1927)
van de Velde (1863-1957)
PETER BEHRENS In 1907 Peter Behrens joined other artists founding the Deutscher Werkbund.
Architect and Designer, he is considered the founder of modern objective
industrial architecture and modern industrial design.
His aim was to promote crafts skills while leading into
industrial production, where standardization and an
objective formal language had to achieve the same high
quality standard as that of handmade goods.
When he was appointed artistic advisor to AEG
(Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft), Behrens
introduced this concept to the industry with the first
comprehensive visual identification system, which
included graphic design, architecture, and product
design.
Behrens (1868-1940)
From 1907 to 1912, he had several students and assistants, and among them
were Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Adolf Meyer, Jean Kramer
and Walter Gropius.
The AEG turbine factory was built around 1909, in Berlin.
It was the best known work of architect Peter Behrens. It is an
influential and well-known example of industrial architecture. Its
revolutionary design features 100m long and 15m tall glass and steel
walls on either side.
Fagus Factory 1911 (W. Gropius and A. Meyer)
Gropius (1883-1969)
In 1908, after studying architecture in Munich and Berlin for four semesters, Gropius
joined the office of the renowned architect and industrial designer Peter Behrens, who
worked as a creative consultant for AEG.
Gropius became a member of the Deutscher Werkbund as early as 1910.
The BAUHAUS (1919-1933) was, first of all, a school with students and teachers.
It was also an architectural design movement that aimed to bring together
art and craftsmanship in order to build a new future.
It made use of materials such as stained glass and metal. It also brought forward the idea of colour theory,
which affirms that colour is the most immediate form of non-verbal communication due to things like
colour association.
Gropius, Weimar and the Manifesto of Bauhaus.
“We want to create the purely organic building,
boldly emanating its inner laws, free of untruths or ornamentation.”
(Walter Gropius)
The Bauhaus Building in WEIMAR
Walter Gropius became Director of the former
Grand-Ducal Saxon College of Fine Arts
(Grossherzoglich Sächsische Hochschule für
bildende Kunst) in Weimar.
He formally unified it with the College of Applied
Art (Kunstgewerbeschule), which had already been
dissolved in 1915, and gave the institution the new
name Bauhaus (Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar).
The official date of its foundation is 1 April 1919.
The Manifesto – in which Gropius announced his programme with all the emotionalism accompanying the sense of
fresh departures after the end of the First World War – was published the same month.
The ultimate aim of all creative activity is a building!
The decoration of buildings was once the noblest function of fine arts, and fine arts were indispensable for great
architecture. Today they exist in complacent isolation, and can only be rescued by the conscious co-operation and
collaboration of all craftsmen. Architects, painters, and sculptors must once again come to know and comprehend the
composite character of a building, both as an entity and in terms of its various parts. Then their work will be filled with
that true architectonic spirit which, as "salon art", it has lost.
The old art schools were unable to produce this unity; and how, indeed, should they have done so, since art cannot be
taught? Schools must return to the workshop. The world of the pattern-designer and applied artist, consisting only
of drawing and painting, must become once again a world in which things are built. If the young person who rejoices in
the creative activity now begins his career by learning a craft, as in the older days, then the unproductive "artist" will
no longer be condemned to inadequate artistry, for his skills will be preserved for the crafts in which he can achieve
great results.
Architects, painters, sculptors, we must all return to crafts! For there is no such thing as "professional art". There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman.
The artist is an exalted craftsman. By the grace of Heaven and in those rare moments of inspiration which transcend the
will, art may unconsciously blossom from the labour of his hand, but a base in handicrafts is essential to every artist. It
is there that the original source of creativity lies.
Let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen without the class-distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier
between craftsmen and artists!
Let us desire, conceive, and create the new building of the future together. It will combine architecture, sculpture, and painting in a single form, and will one day rise towards the heavens from
the hands of a million workers as the crystalline symbol of a new and coming faith.
Manifesto of Bauhaus in Weimar (aprile 1919)
BAUHAUS:
THREE TOWNS
WEIMAR (from 1919 to 1925)
DESSAU (from 1925 to 1932)
BERLIN (from 1932 to 1933) WEIMAR
DESSAU
BERLIN (STEGLITZ)
BAUHAUS:
THREE
HEADMASTERS
WALTER GROPIUS (from 1919 to 1928)
HANNES MEYER (from 1928 to 1930)
LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE (from 1930 to 1933)
BAUHAUS:
THREE
STAGES
Expressionist Stage
(from 1919 to 1923)
“Expressionist” influence
Craft Production
Industrial Stage
(from 1923 to 1925)
“De Stijl” influence (The De Stijl movement was founded by Theo Van Doseburg and
Piet Mondrian as a reaction to the First World War. It consisted
of minimalistic designs that used geometry and primary colours in
order to create simplistic yet effective designs which were still
striking in their own way.)
Development of design
Industrial production
International Stage
(from 1925 to 1933)
Sale of prototypes
Mass-production
Construction systems
Prefabrication
Bauhaus building in Dessau.
Gropius consistently separated the parts of the Bauhaus building
according to their functions and designed each of them differently.
In order to appreciate the overall design of the complex, the
observer must therefore walk around the whole building.
There is no central viewpoint.
The glazed, three-storey workshop wing, the block for the vocational
school (also three storeys high) with its unostentatious rows of
windows, and the five-storey studio building with its projecting
balconies are the main elements of the complex .
A two-storey bridge, which housed for example the administration
department and, until 1928, Gropius’ architectural practice, connects
the workshop wing with the vocational school .
A single-storey building with a hall, auditorium (stage) and canteen
(refectory), connects the workshop wing to the studio building.
The latter originally featured 28 studio flats for students and junior
masters, each measuring 20 m² each.
The interior decoration was designed
and built by Bauhaus students
At BAUHAUS each object’s form
was determinated according
to its function and natural constraint.
The five-storey studio building
The teachers and the subjects BAUHAUS 1919–1933
The teachers at the Dessau BAUHAUS, 1926. Left to right:
Josef Albers, Hinnerk Scheper, Georg Muche, László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, Joost Schmidt, Walter
Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Vasilij Kandinskij, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Gunta Stölzl e Oskar Schlemmer
Diagram of Educational Progress
and Table of Curriculum
This conceptual diagram showing the structure of teaching at the
Bauhaus was developed by Walter Gropius in 1922.
BAUHAUS:
THREE
COURSES
PRELIMINARY COURSE All began with a preliminary course that
introduced the students to the study of
materials, color theory, and formal
relationships in preparation for more
specialized studies.
TECHNICAL COURSE
Following their immersion in Bauhaus
theory, students entered specialized
workshops, which included metalworking,
cabinetmaking, weaving, pottery,
typography, and wall painting.
Former students became junior
masters in charge of the workshops.
STRUCTURAL COURSE
The school did not offer classes in
architecture until 1927, when the
architecture department was opened and
only the most talented students could
qualify for participation in the building
theory course.
Masters' Houses by Walter Gropius
In 1925, the city of Dessau also commissioned Walter Gropius the construction of
three semidetached houses for Bauhaus masters and a detached house for its director.
In 1926, Gropius, the Bauhaus masters László Moholy-Nagy and Lyonel Feininger,
Georg Muche, Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee were able to
move in with their families.
Gropius stepped down as director of the Bauhaus in 1928 and was
succeeded by the architect Hannes Meyer.
Meyer maintained the emphasis on the mass-producible design and
eliminated those parts of the curriculum he felt were overly formalist in
nature. Additionally, he stressed the social function of architecture
and design, favoring concern for the public good rather than private
luxury. Advertising and photography continued to gain prominence under
his leadership.
Under pressure from an increasingly right-wing municipal government,
Meyer resigned as director of the Bauhaus in 1930.
The architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe replaced him. Mies once
again reconfigured the curriculum, with an increased emphasis on
architecture. Lily Reich assumed control of the new interior design
department. Other departments included weaving, photography, fine arts
and building.
1933
The Nazi party was determined to eliminate the "cosmopolitan modernism", which they
saw as foreign and "un-German". This of course included the entire Bauhaus movement.
On April 11th, the beginning of the summer semester, the Bauhaus building in Berlin was
searched by the police and sealed off. Thirty-two students were temporarily detained. There
was considerable uncertainty regarding the future of the college, which was also experiencing
financial difficulties. On July 20th, the conference of teaching staff takes the decision to close
the Bauhaus.
In the subsequent years, the best-known Bauhaus teachers emigrated.
Among them there were Josef Albers (1933, USA), Vasilij Kandinskij (1933, France), Paul
Klee (1933, Switzerland), Walter Gropius (1934 Britain; 1937, USA), László Moholy-Nagy
(1934, Netherlands; 1935, Britain; 1937, USA), Marcel Breuer (1935, Britain; 1937, USA),
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1937, USA), Herbert Bayer (1938, USA) and Walter Peterhans
(1938, USA).