Our family visited Dessau Germany in 1996. We were traveling throughout Germany and my manic preoccupation with Bauhaus and it's roots being in Germany lead our travels through many parts of Germany that my young family only tolerated at my direction. The Dessau school (or Institute of Design) was a museum of Bauhaus artifacts left when the Nazis drove out the school in 1933. (many of it's masters ironically traveled to Chicago and changed the city forever - Mies Vander Rohe was probably the most famous one. He blossomed in America and embraced a city of steel and glass and left his mark.) I was mesmerized with the simplistic layout, clean lines of pottery, glass, metal work, textiles, furniture and the buildings of the Bauhaus School in Dessau themselves. Buildings were simply not built that way in 1923 when the first concept of Bauhaus style was developed from De Stijl publications and Russian Constructivism at their starting points.
Bauhaus originated from Walter Gropius and his architectural firm when they displayed Bauhaus products at the International Architecture Exhibition in 1923. Walter was fixated on functional, dynamic architecture, which developed standardized - type housing designs. They were the precursors of apartment buildings and used the building blocks concept of fitting together spaces into interior design that functioned in conjunction with one another. The "Stijl" influence of horizontal - vertical, two dimensionality, squares and cubes to fit together to support one another was new to the world. The press covered it wildly. The whole world was intrigued with the idea that "modern" products were the future. The Bauhaus School claimed modernity and new thinking. The Masters of Bauhaus fought fervently among their ranks. The ideas were new and not everyone agreed with each other.
The dream of a "rural estate " predisposed the Dessau School. To develope an opportunity to build structures and experiment with use of space, formal and technical solutions, and give the whole group of members better living conditions, offer the students Bauhaus based solutions to how they would learn and hands on solutions to explore the products that they developed was a Walter Gropius dream come true. 20 detached houses on a hillside, 50 one family terraced houses on a plateau, and 40 student housing dormitory rooms were planned around a space at the middle of the estate to create a campus planned totally from nothing. All structures were built with the idea that success could bring a second story for growth. Gropius designed a "large scale bulding set" which could be combined in various ways, and based on a set of six components. There was no formal architectural department of study at the school. So the Bauhaus Masters worked together to attend to the details. Marcel Breuer (from the joinery workshop), Georg Muche (a painter) and Farkas Molnar worked to build a design with the six components. Muche would go on to design and build a large apartment complex in the USA. Marcel Breuer worked on a similar project in Germany.
When you visit the school, the political turmoil that plagued the Masters is evident. The Nazis despised the forward thinking of the group. It was labeled subversive and more and more controls were put in place. Any government funding was continually challenged. The Education Reform Movement closed down many comparealbe institutions and the Masters knew that it would not be long before their fate would be sealed.
For a school of it's type to only enjoy ten years of existence, and to make such a dramatic effect on the world is pretty amazing. The textiles, metal work and glass that was developed during that time is still employed today in various design detailing created by Knoll, Architex, Thonet, Herman Miller and many others. The work that continued by Eliel Saarinen, Florence Knoll, Mies VanDerRohe, Harry Bertoia, Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, and Oskar Schlemmer proved to the world that the Nazis were right. This group of Masters was forward thinking, subversive in accepting the status quo and would change the world. Walking through the rooms of the Bauhaus Dessau was a thrill for me and my young family. The impressions of the prizms of light, the sound of the hollow corridors and the touch of the linen, flax, and cotton textiles will be with me forever.
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