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century, there are problems with the rejection of ornamentation. Ornament is often the elaboration of function. Peaked roofs shed snow and water, and save roofs from leaking or breaking under heavy loads. Porches protect and welcome the visitor, and give him or her a sense of moving from a common public area into someone's private space. Eaves protect walls from weather and from water marks. In the same way, pediments protect windows and the people who open them. Windows that open are nice because they give occupants a sense of control over their environment.

Many architects still employ concrete as an honest material. Many people do not like it. It is an ugly color, in its frank gray state. It is hard, often rough, and does not absorb sound well. Concrete floors may be easy care, and even attractive if stained and waxed, but they are hard to walk on all day.

In some areas the piers of Bauhaus, which could be called columns, raise buildings into the air for reasons which are obscure. This can create a soft story, an area of vulnerability in earthquake or high wind, without a clear purpose.

When Bauhaus started from zero, they ignored vernacular architecture, which is the way people have been building with local materials in accordance with local conditions since building began. A true proletarian architecture might have based itself in the traditional forms that the actual proletarians have found useful and even beautiful.

The idealists of Bauhaus get blamed for the blank excesses of International Style, the tall empty glass boxes, and the mirrored surfaces that seem to reflect nothing.(International Style can be thought of as the continuation of Bauhaus, after it was evicted from prewar Germany.) If this is fair, we should also praise the school for the high achievements of artists and architects who studied or taught there, or who followed the path the Bauhaus blazed.

The painters Klee, Kandinsky and Mondrian famously taught at the Bauhaus, and no one can deny their achievements. Mies van der Rohe produced residences of poetic beauty, as well as designing housing projects and office buildings, after the rise of the Nazi regime caused him to leave Germany for the United States. Tel Aviv is ornamented with many structures of charming Bauhaus style, and is called the White City because these Bauhaus style buildings were originally white.

At the Bauhaus teachers and students wanted to unify art, utility, and technology. They wanted to free people in their daily lives, from architectural clutter and the heaviness of the past. They produced useful furniture, a few buildings, pottery, and other kinds of art that attempted to express this ideal. However, it is the ideas of the Bauhaus, more than its products, which still motivate architects and artists today.

Learn more about this author, Janet Grischy.
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