The Bauhaus movement is a school of art, architecture and design characterized by geometric design, respect for practical material, and its severely economic sensibilities. The Bauhaus movement was founded by Walter Gropius in 1919 in Germany and ended in the 1930’s. Gropius coined the term Bauhaus as an inversion of the word meaning ‘house construction’ or ‘Hausbau’. Gropius taught at a school which focused on functional craftsmanship, and his students were guided to focus on designs that could be mass produced. The Bauhaus school had some famous teachers which included Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Breuer. The Bauhaus movement continues to influence us today, where any modern environment often incorporates elements of the period. The ideas of the Bauhaus creators have influenced architecture, furniture, typography, and weaving. Famous artists of the Bauhaus movement include Lyonel Feininger, Johannes Itten, Franz Marc, Georg Muche, and Oskar Schlemmer.
Walter Gropius
Walter Gropius was born in 1883 in Berlin to a German architect. He studied at the Technical Univerisities in Munich and Berlin and joined the company of Peter Behrens in 1910, later joining the practice of Adolph Meyer. After serving in the war Gropius joining several radical artist groups, finally becoming the Director of the Bauhaus. Gropius left the Bauhaus and resumed private practice as WWII approached, and later moved to the United States to become a professor at Harvard University. From 1938 to 1941 he worked on a group of houses with Marcel Breure and in 1945 he created "The Architect's Collaborative", which was a design team that encompassed his value of teamwork. Gropius was well known for his innovative designs that used modern materials and construction methods. He believed in industrialized and efficient buildings, he accepted standardization and mass production, and he supported the belief that team work was essential. In essence Gropius created buildings on precise math calculations and science. Gropius also introduced to the times a screen wall system that was made up of a structural steel frame, which allowed external glass walls to cover a surface uninterrupted. Gropius was an important teacher and theorist in his time and he died in Boston in 1969.
