BAUHAUS: Less Is More

Whether you are navigating the stark geometry of urban landscapes or swiping through the sleek interfaces of your devices, minimalism exists everywhere. It is more than a design choice; it has embedded itself as an inseparable philosophy in our daily lives. At its core lies the principle that ‘less is more’, transcending mere aesthetics to challenge our relationship with space, form and function. This ethos found its boldest expression in the Bauhaus movement (1919-1933) where art, architecture and design converged to strip away the superfluous and celebrate the essential. By distilling industrial design into its purest elements, Bauhaus sought to redefine beauty and to construct standardized models for the built environment. From unifying creativity and technicality to inducing a new direction in design, the influence of the Bauhaus is undisputed and is very much prominent in the present day.

THE HISTORY OF THE BAUHAUS

Phase 1: Weimar (1919-1925)

Founded in 1919 in Weimar by German architect Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus (German for ‘house of building) was an art school marked by a determination to reform education where art, craft and technology were unified. During the early years, the school had a utopian vision of revolutionising a new society influenced by movements like Romantic notions of the Arts and Crafts Movement (1860-1920)–an anti-industrial movement standing for traditional craftsmanship and socioeconomic reform. However, the school was plagued like the young Republic itself by internal dissent between artists and philosophers of differing ideologies. Unreasonable external demands of conservative politicians and the public, coupled with the hyperinflated German economy in the early 1920s further forced the Bauhaus to redefine its aims and temper idealism with realism. Nonetheless, the newly elected right-wing government withdrew funding, criticising the Bauhaus for its perceived radicalism and un-German influences. The school was forced to leave Weimar in 1925.

The Bauhaus Building in Dessau designed by Walter Gropius (Image from https://www.grapheine.com/en/history-of-graphic-design/bauhaus-designers)

Phase 2: Dessau (1925-1932)

The Bauhaus relocated to Dessau in 1925 where it was considered the golden age of the Bauhaus. Detaching itself from Romantic notions of artistic self-expression, rational, quasi-scientific ideas that aligned more closely to the industry were employed instead and brought about important changes in the school’s curriculum and teaching methods. Iconic Bauhaus designs, such as the Wassily Chair by Marcel Breuer (who was the director of the furniture workshop at the Bauhaus) and the Bauhaus Building in Dessau (designed by Gropius) were created during this phase. In 1928, Gropius resigned as director and was succeeded by Swiss architect Hannes Meyer. As an avowed Marxist, Meyer emphasised the social responsibility of design to serve the needs of the working class. However, he was forced to resign due to political differences with local authorities in 1930.

Phase 3: Berlin (1932-1933)

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was appointed the new director after Meyer’s resignation and sought to depoliticize the school to focus on architectural and art education. In 1932, the Nazi Party gained control and condemned the school as a breeding ground of ‘decadent’ and ‘Bolshevistic’ art (‘Cultural Bolshevism’ is a term used by the Nazis to denounce modernist art and design). Relocating yet again to Berlin, the Bauhaus operated as a private institution in a rented factory building, albeit short-lived, as the Nazi regime officially shut down the school on April 11, 1933. This was the first tangible expression of the party’s cultural policy, of its determination to remove every trace of what they regarded as ‘degenerate art’ from Germany.

BAUHAUS AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Principle aims of the Bauhaus

The Bauhaus had three fundamental aims despite changing directions several times during its short life. The first aim was to rescue all the arts from the isolation in which each then (allegedly) found itself. This meant for training craftsmen, painters and sculptors of the future to embark on cooperative projects where all their skills would be combined. These projects would be buildings for, as the declaration of the Manifesto begins, ‘The ultimate aim of all creative activity is building’. The second aim was to elevate the status of the crafts to that which the ‘fine arts’ then enjoyed. The Manifesto proclaims ‘there is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman’ and proposes to ‘create a new guild of craftsmen without the class distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist’. Viewing the artist as an exalted craftsman, the Bauhaus attempted to unify and remove the barrier between the arts. 

Influence of the Industrial Revolution

The Bauhaus can be seen as a response to the Industrial Revolution (1760-1840) for economic success. The Industrial Revolution brought forth machines and materials which usurped the traditional function of the artist and craftsman. Cast iron, for example, was more versatile than brick or wood, while steam-driven machines could stamp, cut and fashion almost any substance faster and more regularly than the human hand. Mechanized production also meant lower prices and higher profits. Subsequently, during the late 19th century, arts and crafts education was in urgent need of reform as schools failed to convince society at large that they were anything more than the poor relations of the fine art academies training artisans, not artists. The academies continued to give instruction referencing the study of the Antique and old masters, blind to the successes and potential of the avant-garde. Furthermore, the revolution precipitated an architectural crisis: Given the problems created by the distressing growth in urban populations, how and where was the new urban proletariat to be housed?

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION

The Wiener Werkstatte (Viennese crafts workshops in the early 1900s), characterised by a style that was relatively simple and essentially geometric, was a possible solution to this. Radical Viennese architects like Adolf Loos (1879-1933) began to design buildings which to most of their contemporaries appeared alarmingly anonymous and undecorative. The lack of ornamentation has ideological and aesthetic justification. Loos believed ornamentation to be a waste of money since the greater the decoration on an object, the greater the exploitation of the craftsman employed to create it. Architect Hermann Muthesius similarly advocated for this as he wanted objects that expressed qualities of the materials in which they were made, free from unnecessary ornament and could be afforded by the broad public. He asserted that ‘what we expect from machine products is smooth form reduced it its essential function’. 

The Stoclet Palace by Josef Hoffmann of Wiener Werkstatte (Image from https://www.ramonesteve.com/en/manufacturing-the-interior/josef-hoffmann-y-los-wiener-werkstatte/)

As the founder of the Bauhaus, Gropius believed that all design should be approached through a study of the problems that needed to be addressed. Consequently, he followed Muthesius’ modernist principle that functionality should dictate form, giving rise to the fabled phrase ‘form follows function’. Applying these beliefs, Gropius designed affordable housing and sought to improve physical conditions for factory workers during the interwar period. He also experimented with innovative building and assembly techniques using prefabricated units and new materials like reinforced concrete, enabling cheap and mass housing production. Friend of Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier was a key pioneer of the principles of the Bauhaus who created influential modern designs, including the Domino House. The house is a concrete structural unit comprised of three horizontal slabs, six columns and a scissor staircase connecting the levels. Deemed a system of constructions that can be arranged according to infinite combinations of plans, the Domino House is a prominent model of standardization which can even be found in the present day.

Domino House (1915) by Le Corbusier (Image from https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Le-Corbusier-created-the-Domino-House-in-1915-The-Design-for-the-house-reveals-the_fig8_343174887)

LESS IS MORE

The notion of minimalism extends beyond architecture to pictorial representation. Appointed as Director of Form at the Bauhaus, Paul Klee was a prevalent artist who taught general courses in the theory of pictorial form. Klee famously describes the most basic of human marks as ‘an active line on a walk, moving freely without goal’. Klee’s fundamental indoctrinations is modeled after the way children learn to read: Just as letters can be rearranged into words, Klee would as students to repeat the same form in as many positions as possible, demonstrating the multiple ways of how a point can become a line, a line can become a plane, and so on. It was only through such painstaking practices could the groundwork for future works be laid, before tone and color comes into play. To determine the success of an image, the principles of the Bauhaus proposed that artists should break down artworks into the most elementary components–line, form, and color. In addition to drawings and buildings, the Bauhaus also exhibited ‘form follows function’ in furniture designs. Considered the last true functionalist, Marcel Breuer was one of the youngest students at the Bauhaus who later became a master and taught furniture design until 1928. In his famous model B33 chair design, he embraced the use of tubular steel which could bend, resembling the ease of a drawn line rather than the craft of carpentered assembly. The sitter becomes cantilevered over a void on a stretched canvas or leather, instead of being firmly placed on four stolid legs. Taking advantage of the cantilever, the chair has a slight spring when seated, acting as a shock absorber while offering an incline. Breuer’s reduction of traditional form into a single curve perfectly illustrates the simplistic ideals of the Bauhaus, creating a design that is both ergonomic and easily manufacturable.

Castle and Sun (1928) by Paul Klee (Image from https://totallyhistory.com/castle-and-sun/)

Chair (Model B33) (1928) by Marcel Breuer (Image from https://www.moma.org/collection/works/122197)

Other References:

Whitford, Frank. Bauhaus. National Geographic Books, 2019.