The Bauhaus: a century of inspiration and legacy

The Bauhaus turns 100 today. The legacy of its philosophy has had such a profound influence on design, architecture, printing, performing arts and interior design that we aren’t always fully aware of its importance. And yet.

Founded in Weimar at the end of World War I, the Bauhaus school was initially a humanist response to the unprecedented scale of the Great War’s atrocities. When the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in 1919, the architect Walter Gropius settled in this cultural hub of Germany and merged the schools of fine arts and applied arts to create a single institution: the Bauhaus. Its mission? To be open to all strata of society, to serve as a place for experimentation and to integrate art into everyday life. Its motto? “Form follows function“. In the school’s original manifesto, Gropius declared, “Together we want, conceive, and create the new building of the future, which will embrace everything in a single form: architecture, plastic arts and painting“.

Gropius succeeded in bringing together the greatest artists of his time for this project. Masters of the calibre of Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky taught at the school throughout its 14 years of existence. Although Walter Gropius refused to define a “Bauhaus style”, the members of the movement were united around a single idea: the industrial revolution of the 19th century had changed the world, and it was now necessary to embrace modern techniques and materials and put them at the service of humanity and the environment.

The school therefore embraced materials such as concrete, steel and glass to construct minimalist and functional works, combining geometric shapes and primary colours. All disciplines within the school were used and given equal standing. The Bauhaus restored manual labour and craftsmanship to their rightful place by placing them at the centre of its teaching. Architects, painters and sculptors thus worked hand in hand to build a “total” architectural work: workshops for metal, pottery, carpentry and furniture, textiles, glass and mural painting, and finally theatre, contributed to the multidisciplinary nature of the education offered, as well as being the school’s strong point. A key objective, which would fundamentally determine the future of object and furniture design, was the desire to break down the supposed contradiction between art and industry.

The school moved to Dessau-Roßlau in 1925, then to Berlin in 1932, driven out by local governments. In 1933, Mies van der Rohe, the famous architect who was then the school’s director, was forced to declare the dissolution of the Bauhaus due to Nazi censorship and pressure.

However, the spirit of the Bauhaus didn’t die: by fleeing Germany, teachers and students spread across the globe, particularly to the United States, where they disseminated their ideas. They thus bequeathed an immense legacy from which contemporary architects and designers continue to draw inspiration.

Today, the spirit of the Bauhaus is everywhere. Everywhere where it is primarily about the search for meaning and rationality and the rejection of the superfluous and the decorative: from the purity of the smartphone (“form follows function”) to flat design, from functional furniture without unnecessary ornamentation by Habitat or Ikea to the calculated rigour of Philippe Starck’s or Jean Nouvel’s architecture.

A century after its creation, the Bauhaus has never been more alive and youthful.