Iconic Architecture: 4 Modern Homes Influenced by the Bauhaus School
Bauhaus, a revolutionary Modernist movement that emerged from the chaos of World War I, transformed the art, design, crafts, and architecture of the 20th century. The style and spirit persist even today, from IKEA’s furniture all the way up to Mies van der Rohe’s Chicago skyscrapers.
The Bauhaus (literally, “house of building”) school of art and design opened in Weimar, Germany, in 1919. Founded by architect Walter Gropius, its “preliminary course,” supervised by the revered artist-teacher Josef Albers, taught form and color theory, composition, life drawing, and visual analysis. Albers’ wife, Anni, (considered the greatest textile designer of the 20th century) taught weaving and design. More advanced art courses were led by Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and the like.
Cherished are Josef Hartwig’s wooden chess pieces and the Marianne Brandt half-spherical, shiny metal tea kettle. The iconic Bauhaus building itself, so radical for its day, well, it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Along with the graphic design, paintings, lamps, lights, stacking tables, chairs, carpets, and tapestries that flowed from Bauhaus creators, its architecture was so profoundly transformative that we take it for granted today in our skyscrapers, public buildings, and homes.
The Bauhaus architects embraced new construction techniques and materials. Rather than conceal a building’s structural components, they would showcase beam, truss, and rafter. They shunned the elaborate and merely decorative in favor of geometric rigor, minimalist simplicity and richness of material that delighted the eye.
The Bauhaus would conquer the world in the 1950s and ‘60s. But the rise of the Nazi Party in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s put an end to the Bauhaus School. In 1933, the Bauhaus building in Dessau was shuttered. By 1945, it was a bombed-out ruin.
Our function dictates our form. Thus, Luxury Defined simply cherishes these Bauhaus-inspired luxury homes.
