Bauhaus is the abbreviation for Staatliches Bauhaus , a German art and architecture school that operated in Weimar from 1919 to 1925 and later in Dessau until 1933 .
Heir of the pre-war avant-gardes, it was not only a school, but also the fundamental point of reference for the whole movement of innovation in the field of design and architecture known as rationalism, functionalism, "modern architecture" or even "style" Bauhaus. "
Bauhaus of dessau
His teachers, belonging to different nationalities, were leading figures in European culture. The educational experience of the school will profoundly affect artistic and technical teaching to date.
model of the Bauhaus designed by Gropius
More generally, the Bauhaus was a crucial moment in the twentieth-century debate on the relationship between technology and culture.
The school was born from the merger of the Grand Duchy School of Plastic Arts (Academy of Fine Arts) and the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of artistic craftsmanship).
This origin exemplifies the program of the new school that wanted to bring together applied art and architecture. Founder and director of the new school was Walter Gropius who was in favor of laboratory-based design teaching both for designers (designers) and artisans (performers).
The school set off in a climate of great practical difficulties in the defeated Germany of the first post-war period. Just in Weimar, in the same months, the constitution was approved and the first government of the democratic republic was established and swept away by Nazism in 1933.
Gropius was head of the school for a decade, until 1928, followed by Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
