Blog

By Bobbi Pinkert, Class of 1999 and Bill Shapiro, Class of 2000

It’s been one hundred years since the founding of the Bauhaus. The word itself— “Bauhaus”— means “Building House” in German. And it is synonymous with the Modern style that gradually rose to prominence during the first half of the 20th century. The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 by members of the German Werkbund, an organization that promoted the use of industrial technology in architecture and the decorative arts.

That same year, the state government of Thuringia was persuaded to transform the existing Art Academy in Weimar, its principal city, into the Bauhaus. Its director was the visionary architect Walter Gropius. He was a devotee of the Modern style, that emerged in Europe around the turn of the 20th century. Modernism in design was seen as the companion of industrial technology and was the guiding aesthetic principle in the curriculum of the Bauhaus.

The school offered both classroom and hands-on training in design. Its workshops produced a wide range of household items intended to serve as prototypes for mass production. The Bauhaus also held exhibitions where these products were sold to the public. An outstanding example of Bauhaus work that is still in production is the Wassily Chair, designed by Marcel Breuer.

The school pioneered an approach to design that emphasized minimizing the boundary between fine and industrial arts, as well as emphasizing craftsmanship in mass production. The curriculum included diverse subjects such as metalworking, furniture design, and architecture. The goal was to bring fine architecture and design to the lives of ordinary people.

Another revolutionary aspect of the Bauhaus was its gender inclusivity. Women worked as equals with their male counterparts. The names Lily Reich, Anni Albers, and others were featured in many exhibits.

Despite its lofty mission, the Bauhaus could not escape the political and economic turmoil of post-World War I Germany, especially since Weimar was the home of the newly created national government. Throughout its brief history, the Bauhaus was plagued by a shortage of funds and opposition from right-wing political groups. Socialism was the political creed of the Bauhaus faculty and students. They believed that modern design and technology would improve the standard of living of the working class by providing high quality housing and housewares at an affordable cost.

Within the Bauhaus, however, there was continuous strife over political, artistic, and management issues. Nevertheless, the school quickly gained recognition and influence. Gropius recruited distinguished modernists for the faculty, including the painters Wassily Kandinski and Paul Klee, the graphic designer Joseph Albers, the experimental artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and the architect Marcel Breuer.

In August 1923, an exhibit at the Bauhaus of works by the students titled “Art and Technology: The New Unity” became an artistic event of historic proportions. It was attended by a “Who’s Who” of leading modernists in the arts (even including the composers, Stravinski and Hindemith), as well as prominent architects, politicians, and industrialists. Total attendance during the six weeks of the exhibition was 15,000.

Despite this success, political events would soon bring about the demise of the Weimar Bauhaus. State financial support was withdrawn in March 1925, forcing the school to close its doors. Consistent with the school’s turbulent history, a Hollywood –style, last minute rescue arrived in the form of an invitation to rebuild the Bauhaus in Dessau. The left-leaning city council believed that the mission and reputation of the Bauhaus would contribute to the growth of both industry and culture in Dessau, helping to reverse decades of decline. Gropius designed a new building to house the school. When completed in late 1926, this magnificent structure instantly became the most potent icon of modern architecture. With its vast curtain wall of steel and glass and its giant sign in block capitals, the building forever identifies the Bauhaus as the fountainhead of Modernism.

The enormous expenses incurred by the city in support of the Bauhaus provided a platform for attacks from the right. Worn out by the struggles, Gropius resigned in February 1928. The Swiss architect Hannes Meyer replaced him.

The new director proved to be a capable administer and an effective marketer of the products of the Bauhaus workshops. But his Marxist political views were anathema to the city leaders. They feared a Communist uprising as employment shrank due to the Depression. The Bauhaus clearly needed a leader who was a respected professional not involved in partisan politics. Gropius felt that the prominent modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was best suited to deal with the crisis. Mies was hired as the new director, and he acted immediately to depoliticize the school. The entire student body was expelled. Readmission was granted only on the condition that students pledge to abstain from political activities.

These and other measures were too little and too late. En route to their final victory in Germany, the Nazis gained control of the Dessau city council in April 1932. In August, the city withdrew its financial support for the Bauhaus. In a last-ditch effort to save the Bauhaus, Mies took financial control of the school, converted it into a private institution, and relocated it to Berlin. After a Gestapo raid in April 1933, Mies and the faculty agreed that the school could not survive the hostility of the Nazi regime. They voted to close the Bauhaus one final time.

This was by no means the end of the story. The Bauhaus teachings spread to other countries—especially the U.S.—by former faculty and students fleeing Nazi oppression in Germany. In 1937, Gropius was appointed to head the Department of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. A number of his students became renowned architects, including I.M. Pei, Paul Rudolph, and Philip Johnson.

In Chicago, the influence of the Bauhaus emerged in two iterations: The New Bauhaus, led by Moholy-Nagy opened in 1937: and Mies’s leadership role at IIT.

Maholy-Nagy, who had been director of Visual Fundamentals at the Bauhaus, opened “The New Bauhaus” in Marshall Field’s Prairie Ave. home and appointed George Fred Keck, an ardent follower of the Bauhaus, as head of the Department of Architecture. Walter Gropius, who served as a sponsor and advisor, developed the curriculum for the Chicago Bauhaus. The focus on “an acceptance of the machine as an instrument worthy of the artist, a recognition of good design for mass production, and a dissolution of the division between the ‘fine’ and applied arts” formed the foundation of the school’s philosophy.

During its heyday, the school (that evolved into the Institute of Design) employed Gropius, Alvar Alto, R. Buckminster Fuller, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Richard Neutra and other prominent names as guest teachers.

Mies van der Rohe arrived in Chicago in 1938. As Director of the School of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, he also trained and inspired a new generation of architects. During the war years, he worked with his associates and graduate students to develop design concepts for the architecture of the future. In 1949, he was commissioned to design twin high-rise apartment buildings on Chicago’s lakefront. Completed in 1951, these steel and glass buildings at 860 and 880 Lakeshore Drive were the prototype for the modern skyscraper that would soon transform the skylines of our major cities.

Mies’s arrival in Chicago pulled the plug on the New Bauhaus’s program. He had little interest in the social concerns of the school and did not consider Maholy-Nagy entitled to direct the Bauhaus. Mies went as far as threatening to leave the directorship if Keck continued to be part of the faculty of the now absorbed New Bauhaus.

In 1949, the New Bauhaus became the Illinois Institute of Design, a graduate program under the auspices of IIT. It is now the largest full-time, graduate-only design program in the United States and is housed in the new Kaplan Institute of Design designed by John Ronan.

The influence of the Bauhaus and later, Mies Van der Rohe, has lasted into the 21st Century, and its focus on revolutionary design still influences Chicago’s architecture.