BRIEF HISTORY WALTER GROPIUS AND THE BAUHAUS
All you need to know about the mastermind behind this homeThe Bauhaus was a design school that thrived only briefly in inter-war Germany,
but in 2019 – its 100th anniversary year – its minimalist, form-follows-function
approach continues to have a huge influence on the worlds of architecture and
design. Its founder, Walter Gropius, was born in 1883 to an affluent family of
politicians and architects in Berlin. He famously couldn’t draw, but found work
with radical architect Peter Behrens (alongside future Modernist titan Ludwig Mies
van der Rohe). After World War I, Gropius took over a school of arts and crafts in
Weimar, transforming it into the Bauhaus. Its faculty, which included Modernist
pioneers Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and László Moholy-Nagy, was
interested in exploring the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art). This concept
involved many different mediums, from woodwork to weaving, coming together to
create something bigger, such as a new kind of house. Between 1919 and 1933, the
Bauhaus school moved first from Weimar to Dessau, then to Berlin, before eventually
being forced to close by the Nazis. Gropius fled to the US – as did other members
of the school – where he taught at Harvard and continued his work as an architect.158 ELLEDECORATION.CO.UK S EP T E M B ER 2019