by Christa Nwokedi

Created on: November 30, 2008

Bauhaus is an architectural style known for inspiring the 20th Century Modern Architecture and named after Bauhaus School of Architecture and Fine Art in Weimar. Its thought-provoking ideas spread worldwide having a great influence on architecture and all arts. It seems almost impossible to define this great impact. But a brief look into the short history of the school between 1919 and 1933 might throw light on the routs of the challenging task the school took upon and the way the ideas conquered the world.

Bauhaus school was founded by architect Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919. It was a merger of the Grand Ducal School of Arts and Craft and the Weimar Academy of Fine Art. The philosophy and approach to teaching of the new school could be traced back to the 19th century reform movement of Philipp Morris which aimed at combating the damage incurred on culture by industrialization. It also was closely associated with the discussions of the ideological and socio-economic reconciliation of the fine arts and the applied arts going on since 1907. (Represented by Henry van de Velde who called for crafts being the basis for design and Hermann Muthesius who introduced first industrial prototypes in architecture)

Bauhaus manifesto commits to bringing back together all artistic disciplines: sculpture, painting, arts and crafts, and manual trades. Alfred Barr, the Director of the Museum of Modern Art 1938, summarizes it in his preface to the book Bauhaus (edited by Gropius and Bayer), "because we live in the 20th century, the student architect or designer should be offered no refuge in the past but should be equipped for the modern world in its various aspects, artistic, technical, social, economic, spiritual, so that he may function in society not as a decorator but as a vital participant. Walter Gropius claimed in April 1919 at their first exhibition "Exhibition of Unknown Architects" that the school will be breaking down the barrier between craftsman and artists, creating a new guild of craftsmen without the class snobbery.

This portentous aims were set into practice by well known persona: German architect Walter Gropius, along with German sculptor Gerhard Marcks, Swiss painter Johannes Itten, German-American painter Lyonel Feininger. Since Bauhaus was striving to detach from academics, it developed a specific compulsory preliminary course in metalwork, weaving, pottery, furniture, typography and wall painting to enable pupils to work with materials, to get acquainted

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