by Shelly Mcrae

Created on: September 17, 2007   Last Updated: November 18, 2011

The architectural style known as Bauhaus began as a political statement. Its originators developed a following, a cult, and the style morphed from an anti-elitist activists' movement to an assemblage of architecture de jour for the rich.

In 1919, the young, handsome, charismatic Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus School in Weimer, Germany. Author Tom Wolfe, in his book "From Bauhaus to Our House", describes the Bauhaus as "more than a school; it was a commune, a spiritual movement, a radical approach to art in all its forms". (It must be noted here, that the author, Tom Wolfe, is not a fan of Bauhaus, and the comment, though apt, preludes the illusionary edict of the schools.)

Indeed, the approach to all art forms at the Bauhaus was rooted in deconstructionism; Germany was in ruins after World War I and the rallying cry of the Bauhaus occupants was to "start from zero". Architecture, in particular, should reflect the labor of the workers, the materials used by the workers; the very design was to mirror the function of the structure. Bauhaus, as a style, advocated socialism.

Simple, clean lines. Common materials. No decoration or ornamentation. This, the Bauhaus acolytes were taught, was representational of the true sense of architecture. It was Gropius' idea to bring in workers, true laborers, to build and supply the new architectural structures, so that the labor of the people would be rewarded and reflected in the new architectural landscape.

But this idea was short-lived, as it became apparent that only the wealthy could afford hand-crafted labors, and surely machine work was the ideal. Handcrafted goods were bourgeois, and bourgeois was exactly what Bauhaus was not.

But as World War II loomed, the artistic elite of the Bauhaus abandoned the schools and made their way to America. And ultimately, the skyscraper was born.

The upper echelon of the Bauhaus immigrants became instructors at universities such as Yale and Harvard, hardly colleges of the working class. The Bauhaus style gave birth to the International style, the modern movement, the clean lines look to which the wealthy subjected the American landscape.

What followed was a generation of architects who shunned ornamental flourishes, personal touches, anything that enhanced the square, glass and steel structure of structure. Metropolitan centers were crammed full of towering hot boxes. Custom homes were indifferent huddles of squared storage spaces, meant to store nothing more than bare necessities and their owners. And government housing was row upon row of cheaply built apartments that decayed from shabby labor and neglect.

This is the legacy of Bauhaus.

Bauhaus was meant to establish a new landscape in war torn Europe, a landscape that would embrace the worker, would reflect his worth and value in the use of honest materials and employment of simple design. But this movement became instead a status symbol, and then, finally, not a style at all. It became an excuse to build bad housing, impractical commercial buildings, and to ultimately neglect that which makes architecture an art form, style itself.

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