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07 · Modernist

Bauhaus

c. 1919–1933

Flat-roofed white boxes, ribbon and corner windows, and zero ornament.

Look for

Flat roof Ribbon window Stucco wall
Bauhaus Dessau, Dessau, Germany: an example of Bauhaus architecture
Bauhaus Dessau, Dessau, Germany. Photo: A.Savin, FAL
Haus am Horn, Weimar, Germany
Haus am Horn Weimar, Germany · sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0
Masters' Houses, Dessau, Germany
Masters' Houses Dessau, Germany · M_H.DE, CC BY-SA 3.0
ADGB Trade Union School, Bernau bei Berlin, Germany
ADGB Trade Union School Bernau bei Berlin, Germany · User:Dabbelju, CC BY 2.5
Engel House, Tel Aviv, Israel
Engel House Tel Aviv, Israel · רוני פומרנץ, CC BY 2.5

what it is

Bauhaus architecture means buildings by the teachers and students of the Bauhaus, a German school of art, design and architecture, and buildings in the same manner. They are flat-roofed, with white rendered walls (smooth plaster over brick or concrete), and are composed of rectangular blocks arranged asymmetrically. Steel-framed windows run in long horizontal bands or wrap around corners, and some walls are entirely glass hung in front of the structure. There is no applied ornament.

Walter Gropius's school building in Dessau (1925-1926) has separate wings for workshops, classrooms and student rooms, linked by a bridge, with a glass wall across the workshop wing. The nearby Masters' Houses (1925-1926) were built for the teachers. In Stuttgart, the Weissenhof Estate (1927), directed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, brought together 21 buildings by 17 architects, including Gropius and Le Corbusier. Tel Aviv's White City has more than 4,000 buildings in the Bauhaus or International Style, some designed by Bauhaus graduates such as Arieh Sharon.

how to spot one

Flat roof A roof that is level or nearly level, often edged by a low wall called a parapet. It is standard on modernist buildings and on Pueblo adobe buildings of the American Southwest. Ribbon window A continuous horizontal row of windows across a facade, separated only by thin mullions (upright bars). It relies on interior columns carrying the floors and is common on modernist buildings. Stucco wall A wall coated with stucco, a plaster of cement or lime, sand and water, finished smooth or textured. It is common on Spanish Colonial Revival, Mission Revival and Mediterranean Revival buildings.

Also look for

Corner windowPilotiCurtain wall

history

Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Weimar on April 1, 1919, by merging an art academy with a school of arts and crafts. Its aim was to join craft training with fine art and to design objects that industry could mass-produce. In 1925 the school moved to Dessau, into the building Gropius designed for it, completed in late 1926. Gropius led it until 1928, Hannes Meyer from 1928 to 1930, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930.

In 1932 the Nazi-led Dessau city council closed the school. Mies reopened it in Berlin, and it shut in 1933 under pressure from the Gestapo. Many of its teachers emigrated: Gropius and Marcel Breuer taught at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, Mies directed architecture at the Armour Institute (now the Illinois Institute of Technology) in Chicago, and László Moholy-Nagy founded the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937. Graduates who settled in Mandatory Palestine helped build Tel Aviv's White City, which UNESCO listed as a World Heritage Site in 2003.

where to find it

The Bauhaus school building in Dessau, Tel Aviv's White City, and the Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart.

architects

Walter GropiusLudwig Mies van der Rohe

easy to confuse with

Villa Savoye, an example of International Style International Style Glass walls hung on exposed steel or concrete grids: weightless, ornament-free, and endlessly repeatable. Coca-Cola Building, an example of Streamline Moderne Streamline Moderne Aerodynamic buildings: smooth white curves, corner and porthole windows, and horizontal speed lines.