The “Deutscher Werkbund”

The Deutscher Werkbund (German Association of Craftsmen), founded in

Munich in 1907, was composed of artists, artisans, and architects who designed

industrial, commercial, and household products, as well as practicing

architecture.

Its initial purpose was to establish a partnership of product manufacturers with professional

designers to improve the competitiveness of German companies in global markets.

Its motto Vom Sofakissen zum Städtebau

(from sofa cushions to city-building)

indicates its range of interest.

The Deutscher Werkbund proposed a new culture of industrial labor, according to which, for

each project, it is necessary to analyse:

production costs,

quality craftsmanship,

manner and time of production.

The group’s intellectual leaders, architects Hermann

Muthesius and Henry van de Velde, were influenced by

William Morris, who, as the leader of the 19th-century English

Arts and Crafts Movement, proposed to revive industrial

craftmanship as a collaborative enterprise of designers and

craftsmen.

Van de Velde and Muthesius expanded Morris’ ideas to include

machine-made goods. They also proposed that only the

function should determine the form and that ornamentation

should be eliminated.

Soon after the Werkbund was founded, it was divided in two

factions.

One, championed by Muthesius, advocated the greatest

possible use of mechanical mass production and standardized

design.

The other faction, headed by van de Velde, supported the value

of individual artistic expression.

The Werkbund adopted Muthesius’ ideas in 1914.

Muthesius (1861-1927)

van de Velde (1863-1957)

PETER BEHRENS In 1907 Peter Behrens joined other artists founding the Deutscher Werkbund.

Architect and Designer, he is considered the founder of modern objective

industrial architecture and modern industrial design.

His aim was to promote crafts skills while leading into

industrial production, where standardization and an

objective formal language had to achieve the same high

quality standard as that of handmade goods.

When he was appointed artistic advisor to AEG

(Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft), Behrens

introduced this concept to the industry with the first

comprehensive visual identification system, which

included graphic design, architecture, and product

design.

Behrens (1868-1940)

From 1907 to 1912, he had several students and assistants, and among them

were Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Adolf Meyer, Jean Kramer

and Walter Gropius.

The AEG turbine factory was built around 1909, in Berlin.

It was the best known work of architect Peter Behrens. It is an

influential and well-known example of industrial architecture. Its

revolutionary design features 100m long and 15m tall glass and steel

walls on either side.

Fagus Factory 1911 (W. Gropius and A. Meyer)

Gropius (1883-1969)

In 1908, after studying architecture in Munich and Berlin for four semesters, Gropius

joined the office of the renowned architect and industrial designer Peter Behrens, who

worked as a creative consultant for AEG.

Gropius became a member of the Deutscher Werkbund as early as 1910.

The BAUHAUS (1919-1933) was, first of all, a school with students and teachers.

It was also an architectural design movement that aimed to bring together

art and craftsmanship in order to build a new future.

It made use of materials such as stained glass and metal. It also brought forward the idea of colour theory,

which affirms that colour is the most immediate form of non-verbal communication due to things like

colour association.

Gropius, Weimar and the Manifesto of Bauhaus.

“We want to create the purely organic building,

boldly emanating its inner laws, free of untruths or ornamentation.”

(Walter Gropius)

The Bauhaus Building in WEIMAR

Walter Gropius became Director of the former

Grand-Ducal Saxon College of Fine Arts

(Grossherzoglich Sächsische Hochschule für

bildende Kunst) in Weimar.

He formally unified it with the College of Applied

Art (Kunstgewerbeschule), which had already been

dissolved in 1915, and gave the institution the new

name Bauhaus (Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar).

The official date of its foundation is 1 April 1919.

The Manifesto – in which Gropius announced his programme with all the emotionalism accompanying the sense of

fresh departures after the end of the First World War – was published the same month.

The ultimate aim of all creative activity is a building!

The decoration of buildings was once the noblest function of fine arts, and fine arts were indispensable for great

architecture. Today they exist in complacent isolation, and can only be rescued by the conscious co-operation and

collaboration of all craftsmen. Architects, painters, and sculptors must once again come to know and comprehend the

composite character of a building, both as an entity and in terms of its various parts. Then their work will be filled with

that true architectonic spirit which, as "salon art", it has lost.

The old art schools were unable to produce this unity; and how, indeed, should they have done so, since art cannot be

taught? Schools must return to the workshop. The world of the pattern-designer and applied artist, consisting only

of drawing and painting, must become once again a world in which things are built. If the young person who rejoices in

the creative activity now begins his career by learning a craft, as in the older days, then the unproductive "artist" will

no longer be condemned to inadequate artistry, for his skills will be preserved for the crafts in which he can achieve

great results.

Architects, painters, sculptors, we must all return to crafts! For there is no such thing as "professional art". There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman.

The artist is an exalted craftsman. By the grace of Heaven and in those rare moments of inspiration which transcend the

will, art may unconsciously blossom from the labour of his hand, but a base in handicrafts is essential to every artist. It

is there that the original source of creativity lies.

Let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen without the class-distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier

between craftsmen and artists!

Let us desire, conceive, and create the new building of the future together. It will combine architecture, sculpture, and painting in a single form, and will one day rise towards the heavens from

the hands of a million workers as the crystalline symbol of a new and coming faith.

Manifesto of Bauhaus in Weimar (aprile 1919)

BAUHAUS:

THREE TOWNS

WEIMAR (from 1919 to 1925)

DESSAU (from 1925 to 1932)

BERLIN (from 1932 to 1933) WEIMAR

DESSAU

BERLIN (STEGLITZ)

BAUHAUS:

THREE

HEADMASTERS

WALTER GROPIUS (from 1919 to 1928)

HANNES MEYER (from 1928 to 1930)

LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE (from 1930 to 1933)

BAUHAUS:

THREE

STAGES

Expressionist Stage

(from 1919 to 1923)

“Expressionist” influence

Craft Production

Industrial Stage

(from 1923 to 1925)

“De Stijl” influence (The De Stijl movement was founded by Theo Van Doseburg and

Piet Mondrian as a reaction to the First World War. It consisted

of minimalistic designs that used geometry and primary colours in

order to create simplistic yet effective designs which were still

striking in their own way.)

Development of design

Industrial production

International Stage

(from 1925 to 1933)

Sale of prototypes

Mass-production

Construction systems

Prefabrication

Bauhaus building in Dessau.

Gropius consistently separated the parts of the Bauhaus building

according to their functions and designed each of them differently.

In order to appreciate the overall design of the complex, the

observer must therefore walk around the whole building.

There is no central viewpoint.

The glazed, three-storey workshop wing, the block for the vocational

school (also three storeys high) with its unostentatious rows of

windows, and the five-storey studio building with its projecting

balconies are the main elements of the complex .

A two-storey bridge, which housed for example the administration

department and, until 1928, Gropius’ architectural practice, connects

the workshop wing with the vocational school .

A single-storey building with a hall, auditorium (stage) and canteen

(refectory), connects the workshop wing to the studio building.

The latter originally featured 28 studio flats for students and junior

masters, each measuring 20 m² each.

The interior decoration was designed

and built by Bauhaus students

At BAUHAUS each object’s form

was determinated according

to its function and natural constraint.

The five-storey studio building

The teachers and the subjects BAUHAUS 1919–1933

The teachers at the Dessau BAUHAUS, 1926. Left to right:

Josef Albers, Hinnerk Scheper, Georg Muche, László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, Joost Schmidt, Walter

Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Vasilij Kandinskij, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Gunta Stölzl e Oskar Schlemmer

Diagram of Educational Progress

and Table of Curriculum

This conceptual diagram showing the structure of teaching at the

Bauhaus was developed by Walter Gropius in 1922.

BAUHAUS:

THREE

COURSES

PRELIMINARY COURSE All began with a preliminary course that

introduced the students to the study of

materials, color theory, and formal

relationships in preparation for more

specialized studies.

TECHNICAL COURSE

Following their immersion in Bauhaus

theory, students entered specialized

workshops, which included metalworking,

cabinetmaking, weaving, pottery,

typography, and wall painting.

Former students became junior

masters in charge of the workshops.

STRUCTURAL COURSE

The school did not offer classes in

architecture until 1927, when the

architecture department was opened and

only the most talented students could

qualify for participation in the building

theory course.

Masters' Houses by Walter Gropius

In 1925, the city of Dessau also commissioned Walter Gropius the construction of

three semidetached houses for Bauhaus masters and a detached house for its director.

In 1926, Gropius, the Bauhaus masters László Moholy-Nagy and Lyonel Feininger,

Georg Muche, Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee were able to

move in with their families.

Gropius stepped down as director of the Bauhaus in 1928 and was

succeeded by the architect Hannes Meyer.

Meyer maintained the emphasis on the mass-producible design and

eliminated those parts of the curriculum he felt were overly formalist in

nature. Additionally, he stressed the social function of architecture

and design, favoring concern for the public good rather than private

luxury. Advertising and photography continued to gain prominence under

his leadership.

Under pressure from an increasingly right-wing municipal government,

Meyer resigned as director of the Bauhaus in 1930.

The architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe replaced him. Mies once

again reconfigured the curriculum, with an increased emphasis on

architecture. Lily Reich assumed control of the new interior design

department. Other departments included weaving, photography, fine arts

and building.

1933

The Nazi party was determined to eliminate the "cosmopolitan modernism", which they

saw as foreign and "un-German". This of course included the entire Bauhaus movement.

On April 11th, the beginning of the summer semester, the Bauhaus building in Berlin was

searched by the police and sealed off. Thirty-two students were temporarily detained. There

was considerable uncertainty regarding the future of the college, which was also experiencing

financial difficulties. On July 20th, the conference of teaching staff takes the decision to close

the Bauhaus.

In the subsequent years, the best-known Bauhaus teachers emigrated.

Among them there were Josef Albers (1933, USA), Vasilij Kandinskij (1933, France), Paul

Klee (1933, Switzerland), Walter Gropius (1934 Britain; 1937, USA), László Moholy-Nagy

(1934, Netherlands; 1935, Britain; 1937, USA), Marcel Breuer (1935, Britain; 1937, USA),

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1937, USA), Herbert Bayer (1938, USA) and Walter Peterhans

(1938, USA).