The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao has been acclaimed,by visitors and critics alike,as Frank Gehry's masterpiece,and his Nationale-Nederlanden Building in Prague as a provocative addition to that city's heritage of innovative architecture .They restore one's faith in miracles,for,in both projects,the architect was urged to excel and enabled to realiza his vision without compromise.There is a sad irony in the fact that Gehry has waited ten yers for the start of construction on Walt Disney Hall in his home city of Los Angeles-which has an abundanceofmoneyandnoinhibitingtraditions-whilecompletingequallydaringstructures,inTwointenselyconservative,cash-starved cities.
Enlightened clients and luck played a major role in both.Paul Koch of the International Netherlands Group,a Dutch insurance company,is a discering patron of architecture,whospent part of his chilehood in prague.Tocontribute a work of art to that city was the fulfillment of a dream that had been brutally interrupted by the soviet invasion of 1968.The corner site,framed by busy streets and facing out over the vltava river had remained empty-Koch called it a missing tooth-since a stray American bomb fell there in 1945.When Czechoslovakia regained its freedom in 1989,President Havel(who lived in a neigh-boring apartment) invited three architects to propose solutions.Zagred-born architect Vlado Milunic was chosen, and he and Koch selected Gehry as the architect to take hie ideas to a higher plane. Thanks to Koch's determination,Havel's support,and Milunic's executive skills, a building that might easily have been blocked by zealous preservationists was guided to fruition.i love the interaction with clients,says the architecr,”especially when they push.”
In contrast to prague, Bilbao was shaped by industry not architects,and its steel mills and shipyards have closed,leaving behind little but the pride and energy of the Basque people.to rejuvenate the river-front,the regional authorities formed an alliance with Thomas Krent,the ambitious director of New York's Solomon Guggenheim Museum,which is seeking to share its collection and new acquisitions with European satellites.The city wanted and got-an icon as potent as the Sydney Opera House to put it on the map for visitors and investors worldwide,to counter press report of niolence by Basque separatists,and to jump-start a massive program of urban renewal.
Like the Amrican Center in Paris,both building relate to the urban fabric and the liquid shimmer of a river,and morph from orthogonal to free-form geometries as you move around them.But the scale is radically different.The Prague building defers to the envelope of its seven-story neo-Renaissance neighbors,and its exuberance is with his own preference for fragmentation to enrich a simple block.Early on,the design was christened Fred Ginger (after Astaire and Rogers,the celebrated Hollwood dance partners)for the projecting corner shaft,and the pinch-waisted companion tower of glass that flares out like a skirt oner its supporting columns.
Gehry's intentions were abstract, not pictorial, and the friendly nickname may distract from the seriousness with whica the architect has addressed the irregular, crossroads site。Trams clank by, skirting and crossing the river, and their passengers glimpse the towersfrom afar in four directions Thus the building reveals itself a piece at a time, arousing expecrations, and composing itself as a tram pauses at the corner. In a city that is full of~architectural events, from late Gothic through baroque to art nouveau and a brief flurry of cubism, Fred and Ginger has become one of the places that defines the urban experience.
The architect has translated the vitality of his conceptual sketches, through study modeJs and computer drawings, into glass, stucco, and metal to the point that one could imagine the building coming to life and strolling away like the Golem in the medieval Prague ghetto。It's no surprise to find touches of whimsy in the surface ornament of period building, but it is refreshing to encounter humor in a good contemporary structure. Here, the rectangular metal windows on the corner and river front resemble rafts bobbing in the wave reliefs across the stucco facade, and Fred has a Medusa head-dress of wire mesh bands (as though the metallic dc on the Secessioe building in Vienna had started to unravel).
At ground level the flared glass canopy provides shelter from Prague's cold, wet winters,mediates between the building line and the street, and corrects a fault in the alignment of the boulevard that leads to a bridge over the river. The free-form interior plan demands equal flexibility from its tenants, and only the Anderson consulting firm has thus far met the challenge, commissioning the Czech-born Eva Jiricna to create an open office enviror merit on the sixth and seventh floors. The penthouse and roof terrace, which Havel hoped would become a popular cafe, is now occupied by an ostentatious French restaurant witl vulgar, gilded decor. Despite this, Fred & Ginger enriches the public realm.
The Guggenheim occupies a footprint twenty times as large, and has already change(public conceptions of Bilbao. Like the Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel tower in Paris, ant San Francisco's Golden Gate Bbdge Jt became the city's signature building from thc moment of its completion, displacing all other contenders. Norman Foster designed the new Metro, Santiago Cala~rava did an footbrige across the river and the new airporL termlnal, and Michael Wilford built the train station, but these play supporting roles to the star.
For Gehry, there was a double challenge: to match the scale of the waterfront that was formerly occupied by warehouses and cranes, and to provide a spectacular successor tcthe Guggenheim's Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda in Manhattan. It proved an ideal match olarchitect and client, for Gebry loves modern art and the industrial aesthetic, and had beer longing to realize his ideas-on a grand scale.
When he converted a downtown Los Angeles warehouse to accommodate the Museum of Contemporary Art, Gehry sought to reveal the innate beauty of the old stlucture and create a neutral container for the art. His artist friends disagreed, urging him to take chances as they did. Krens concurred with that opinion, nothing that, in New York, contemporary artists got mad at the rotunda, and were provoked to do excit-ing things in it He needed galleries that were big enough to accommodate recent acquisitions that wouldn't go through Wright's door, and intimate spaces for classic modern works. Most of the GuggenheimLs collection was in storage; here was a chance to put some of the best work on display Jn a series of roan exhibitions, Despite tile name over the entrance, this was to be a Kunsthalle, not a museum with a perma-nent collection Krens demanded greater audacity and Gehry (who may sometimes be too much in awe of artists) burst out of the box, creating a 165 foot high skylit atrium that twists like a flower reaching towards the sun, and galleries that tilt and turn, engaging a hige level bridge like marine creatures rearing up from the river. From the city center, one glimpses a silvery flower emerging from a stone carapace at the end of a dark street,with the green hills of the Basque country rising above It's a magical moment, and one is tugged forward until the entire building bursts into view, rising high above a flight of steps that lead down to the entrance Titanium scales mirrol the watery light, glowing after frequent the rains A price drop on the international market brought this material within the budget, and its strength allowed it to be used at half the thickness of steel.
Architecture had always belonged to laymen,builders and craftsmen.It had never been taught in an acadenmic way before the 15th century.Evidently the first formal"architecture school"was probably the Academia Platonica,founded by Renaissance master architect Alberti in Florence in the mid-1470s.At that time there were academies teaching literature and other arts,all based on Classical models.The objective was to counter the baleful influence of the craft guilds which still survived from the Middles Agesl.Alberti understood the importance of theory in academic setting(1-1-1).Bertoldo di Giovanni,a sculptor,was appointedas the school director.Although there are no records on the teaching program,thegraduates of the Academia almost definitely inclrded famous historical figures,such as Leonardo da Vinci,who cntered in 1475;Michelangelo,there from 1480;and Antonio Dangallo the younger,as well as and many sculptors.(1-1-2,1-1-3)Broadbent regarded the founding of the architectural school-the Academy-significant,because it proved a more than viable alternative to simply working on the job with a master by which architects,painters and sculptors had been taught until then.It in such an environment(1-1-4).
The Italian Renaissance and post-Renaissance tradition has neve died since.It inspired the French in the 17th century,when a number of institutions for"Dance,Belles,Literature,His-
tory and Archaeology,Science,and Music"were founded in Paris.In1671 Louis XIV founded the Academie Royale d'Architecture,"...with Francois Blondel as Director who gave public lectures twice a week.Ther were lectures also on arithmetic,geometry,mechanics,military architecture,fortifications,perspective drawing and stone cutting.By 1717 these had become a two-or three-year course."AT this early time the Academy offered only lectures;there were noformal design studies.Students learned drawing and design in the studios of their masters.The objectives of school,similar to Alberti,were political:to attack the trade guilds,and to raise architects from the status of craftsman to that of philosopher.The lectures included architectural theory,architectural history,construction perspective drawing and mathematics since 1819 when indeed the school was formally named as the Ecole Royale des Beaux Arts by King Louis XVIII.The separation of lecture courses and desihn studios taught by"the masters"remained since then.This tradition can still be perceived today although student numbers have increased and the status of"masters"has changed to tutors,teachers or professors.
In 1721 JB Fischer von Ehrlach,the great Baroque architect of Vienna,published a most influential architectural history book(1-1-5).Illustrated History of Architecture was meant to ben survey of all architecture2.Since Fischer,there have been many reactions and counter-reactions in academic and professional circles:eclecticism in which any style to rse ,and when.One of its goals was to teach the students the Classical orders-the first"International Style"-wa based on a'one best way'that ought to be built everywhere.
It seems that art was not an independent course,although it was neither addressed in the curriculum nor taught by artists.However,Beaux Arts has a uvique way to produce architectural drawings as artworks of their own right.Artistically refined presentations were driven and motivated by the annual student competition,an early practice of grading and evaluating student projects,which is commonly applied in many schools today.A well-presented scheme was certainly necessary to catch the jury's eye.However,since the time of early 20th century Modernism,Beaux-Arts draughtsmanship has been criticized for ignoring three-dimensional spatial desin and construction.Criticisms are still heard today,but some lack evidence;others are based on misconceptions.
It is true that the typical rendered facade was suited less for the construction of real buidings than for display at an exhibition.However,all the finished drawings,rendered in ink ,rsed orthographic projections to give very precise dimensions,scales and proportions.In order to give a real feeling of depth,light and texture,all the shadows were carefully cast in elevation,even on the plan(1-1-6).Although the plans universally reflected a consistent doctrine of axial planning,and paid particular attention to the artistic quality of the plan as q piece of graphic design,according to Powell&Leatherbarrow3,it was the plan which won or lost a competition;everything else,including perspectives,was subsidiary to it.The close relations between plan,sections,elevations,and movement of people were also addressed in these competitions.They argued that"the moral quality attributed to planning in the twentieth century is the direct outcome of the tradition of the Bearx Arts...Le Corbusier's phrase"the plan is the generator"is only a repetition of the traditional method of the Ecole,although he translated it into different visual terms."Most strikingly,construction was an important subject of study,and was tested in separate competitions(1-1-7).Construction competitions were greatly elaborated towards the end of the 19th century when drawings were required for the construction of a bulding with all the necessary details and calculations.The construction design competition is almost never heard of in architectural schools today.Actually,stripped of the Neo-Classical motifs,the spirit of Beaux-Art education,such as promoting architecture as art and philosophy through consistent study of proportion.order,light and shadow,is still relevant today.There should be no question about the remarkable achievement in the works of Louis Kahn,a modern architect and graduate of an American architecture school in the Beaux-Art tradition,University of Pennsylvania.(1-1-8)His consistent curiosity in light and shadow,massive materials,axial planning,powerful and monumental images can be seen as a direct outcome of a Beaux-Art training(1-1-9).
The Beaux-Art spirit is significant for me in composing this book,not only because it dominated architecture until the 1920s when the Bauhaus presented a different scheme,but also for its attempt to liberate architecture from the narrow constraints of the construction business,business-oriented practitioners,and the professional institutions(a modern equivaledt to Middle-Age guilds).
The background to and impetus for the Bauhaus can be traced to 19th century England and Germany,where the Industrial Revolution-mass production-had especially devastating consequences on the living conditions of artisan and working classes.Increased industrialization meant increasingly cheap goods production,but also led to accelerated social restructuring.At the same time,the develoqment of modern science,new materials and technology,and rationalist thinking inspired confidence in the future.
social restructurmg caused trendous problems especpccrally for the poor.Those directly related to architccture involved the workers' settements.Workers toiled under very severe conditions.Inmany houses the ground floor was only stamped or moulded earth which was often cold and moist.Inthe streets the mud accunulated.The houses were built so closely together that no sunshine could neither penetrate them nor wind ventilate them(1=2=1).Conditions were so bad that many became ill,crippled or died at a very young age.Epidemics repeatedly spread though the workers'quarters,sometimes even over whole towns.The probable dimensions of workers'quarters,sometimes even over whole towns.The probable dimensions of this crisis became clear in 1917 England,when accumulating evidence began to indicate that the external costs of inadequate housina were fat more costly than expected:
-Large number of military recruits was rejected on medical grounds,
-Two-thirds of the children surveyed were physically defective;and
-Industrial unrest was common and widespread.
Germany,next to Russia,was the country whose economy and social structure was most drastically altered by the First World War.In both cases the traditional pyramid of power collapsed,and although in Germany the adroit action of certain bankers and militarists maintained the semblance of continuous central government,in practice,deep-seated problems festered and compounded upon each other:industrial and civil unrest,currency crises,the loss of a major industrial area(the Ruhr).Social problems maintained a potentially revolutionary situation.However,there also seems to have been a decided optimism with industrialization,science and technology in the uncertainty of the time.This was,after all,a veritable revolution,the beginning of a new age.
England rose to become Europe's leading industrial nation in the 19th century.Since the 1870s,other European countries attempted to copy England's success in the field of industrial production.As an architectural indicator of the widespread desire to emulate things English,the Prussian government in 1896 sent Hermann Muthesius,an architect and one of the founding members of Deutscher Werkbund,to study in England for six years.Upon his return,he recommended workshops to be introduced at all Prussian handicraft schools,modern artists to be appointen as teachers and small private workshops to be established in making household goods,furniture and metal utensils.On a much larger scale,Germany quickly overtook England as the leading European industrial nation and maintained this position until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.
However,the switching to machine production in Germany was not without struggle.The Yugendstil movement(1-2-2)in Germany shared many of the impulses of Arts and Crafts in England and Art Nouveau(1-2-3);the rejection or reinterpretation of academic standards in art,architecture and design,the exploration of literary and musical analogies,the celebration of the vernacular as well as new spatial and decorative concepts in architecture,and the conviction that art and design were inseparable,reflecting both a soeial and aesthetic commitment to the"individual value".
However,the uneasy relationship beween craftsmen and industry in Germany was particularly difficult and led to political and social tension.This led to demands for changes in the priorities for design and art education.The ole of designer or craftsman in an industrial society was challenged,reviewed and debated widely.The issus discussed elated to the degree of creative freedom allowed to the potential designer and the nature of his training-how far this was to be academic or divorced from the apprenticeship system,how far the stress was to be on traditional craft skills,and how much acknowledgement was to be given to the demands of German industry.
In Germany,a network of Kunstgewerbeschule(new schools of applied design)was developed in 1880s to inspire and consolidate standards in local craft industries,and was mainly related to local patronage and locat trades.Therefore,Kunstgewerbeschule was developed in keeping with the aims of Jugendstil,the German version of Art Nouveau,which flourished in cultutal and political centres such as berlin,Munich,Dresden and Weimar.
The Deutscher Werkbund founded in Munich in 1907 was an association,wich composed of twelve representatives of leading handicraft companies and artists,whose aim was the"co-operation of art,industry and crafts in the dnnoblement of commercial activity by means of education,propaganda and a united stand on pertinent questions".It provided a platform for the articulation and implementation of ideas about the relationship of art to design and society.Before its formation,however,several German art and design schools adopted programs that challenged traditional conccptions of the role and training of the artist and craftsman.The intentions of their seemingly radical courses were important not only because of their rejection of traditional methods of instruction and expression,but because they implied a change in the role of the artist and his relationship both to his work and society.they stressed the individuality and autonomy of the artist,tut at the sane time they urged an empathy with form and structure that uniten rather than isolated the artists from nature.Or the laws and principles govern the appearance of the nature.
Weimar was predominantly an"art town".Bach,the Cranachs,Goethe,Schiller,Herder and Liszt had lived there.Before the First World War, the town's income was mainly derived from agriculture,and had severla small,mainly craft-based industries.An art academy had already established in 1860,training both painters and sculptors.In1920,Henry van de Velde,the Belgian architect,was invited to Weimer to revitalize both craft and industrial production.Van de Velde encountered many obstacles in developing and running these new schools as he was a foreigner and his ideas were too avant-garde.By 1915,his position there,as a foreign national,was untenable,and he resigned,nominating Walter Gropius as one of three possible successors to his post.When he left for Switzerland in July 1915,the school was closed,its workshops dismantled and the building was used as a military hospital during the war .Bauhaus,led by Walter Gropius,was founded in 1919.
The point to be addressed from this history is that art movement were seen as generator of new design ideals and ideas for industy.Art wat the thought;design and production are the implementation of the thought.
Bauhaus maintained its influence not simply in its pragmatic respones to the reality of
industrialization,but also through its belief of the avant-gatde artistic ideology and determination in realizing such visions.
Imitation exists in any kind of artwrk.It is a form of expression,natural to people,enabling both learning and pleasurable experience of the world.As Row continues,modern art and architecture are neither the imitation of classical forms nor of nature,"Instead,the objects of imitation were drawn mainly from the contemporary technological environment close to intrinsic matters of makeup and function."He means machine and the functions of machine became the new objects to be imitated(1-3-1).However the modern artistic ideology is much more than that.
The prevailing trend in the 19th centuty art world was primarily"realism"in painting and "revivalism"in architecture,by which the architects simply copied and imitated familiar architectural forms or recombined their visual references to earlier building styles.This kind of art production did not reflect the technologicat advancement of its age,but certainly provided artists and architects with the gtreatest assurance of initial
acceptandce by the observers.
In response to this superficiality of design,some avant-garde artists and architects of the time searched for new art concepts.Various new expressions of this style were experimented with.Some architects experimented with naturalistic curvilinear ornament as a novel embellishment of new types of structure and believed that with it they were achieving at last a new art form.For example,Louis Sullivan's writings indicate that advanced architects of the generation continued to hold,quite as much as their public,that ornament was essential to architecture(1-3-2).But neither the emulation of plant forms in architectural decoration,nor the later Art Nouveau in Europe and Jugendstil in Germany,faithfully represented this new spirit.They were merely considered as"modern"as Rococo ornament and soon became boring and unfashionable.Other architects strove for a return to traditional or vernacular style as a response to the inhumane conditions of industrialization.This is particularly noted in John Ruskin's writings and the work of his disciple William Morris,both in England.Although they initiated the Arts and Crafts Movement,its reformative ideas only received limited success and failed to rech the larger population(1-3-3,4).
Among these experiments of different styles,some basic assumptions were initially made about the arts,which were later developed,as the aesthetic premises both of abstract painting and modern architecture.A quotation from Maurice Denis,a French symbolist painter of the generation preceding the development of abstract art:"Before being a representation of anything whatsoever,a picture is a flat surface covered with colours-colours arranged in a certain order and thus arranged to give pleasure to the eye."This stressed the idea that a painting is a material object intended to be apprehendcd in terms of the abstract organisation of its surface elements.Further,it understook that mere lines of stress or areas of plain colour,appealing directly to the eye,can be as powerfully expressive as more complicated forms.
By the time of early cubism,distortion rather than abstraction seem to be a better word for the painters'way of treating natural forms.For abstraction implies simplification-and in the first stage of cubim the analytical breaking up of natural objects produced very elaborate and complex images which were rsrally not readily recognizable.With the next phase of cubism architectonic again(1-3-5,6,7,8)-with simplified and increased scale of the elements of which modern paintings were composed:
Whether these elements were"abstacted"from the forms of natural objects,as they were by the cubists Picasso,Braque and Gris,and also by Mondrian in his early paintings,or whether they were completely nonrepresentational,as in the case of certain other French,Russian and American artists,the most advanced work of the years just before the first European War came very close indeed to research in pure design.
These panitings reflect a careful study of relations,arrangement of elements,and deal with problems of depth and projeetion in a non-perspective way.Soon,these cubist painters were also experimenting with"constrrction",i.e.,either through thir abstract sculpture,or their close personal association with young architects of their generationg.Many architects also attempted abstract painting and sculpture,as a desirable part of the artistic preparation for their profession,one of whom was the most notable was Le Corbusier(1-3-9).
"My master(the excellent teacher Charles L'Eplattenier)had proclaimed:only nature isinspiring and true and should be the support of human endeavour.But do not make nature in the manner of landscape painters,who show nothing but its exterior.Scrutinize in it the cause,the form,the vital development and make the synthesis of it in creating ornaments."
This trend of exploring new architecture through plastic experimentation and abstract principles of painting and sculpture,and a closer linkbetween these arts was further intensified with the immigration of Dutch de Stijl artists such as Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian,and Russian constructivists(1-3-10,11),and suprematists such as Laszlo Moholy-Nagy(the latter a Hungarian,but much influenced by Russian constructivism and suprematism).These artists were seldom appreciated in their own countries,but were generally welcomed by younger architects in open arms.
Van Doesburg,a Dutch painter and art critic,founded the magazine de Stijl in 1917 with a group of artists including the painter Mondrian and architect J.J.P.Oud．Their aim was the promotion of a “universal language”which would”manifest itself in all objects as a style,born from a new relationship between the artist and society”.They believed art should reconcile the great polarities of life.The right angle and the three primary colours,supplemented ty black,white and grey,composed the basic elements of expression(1-2-12,13,14).Van Doesburg,on numerous occasions,designed the tiled floors,stained glass windows and other decorative accessories for his Dutch architect-friend Oud in his house projects.In1924,Rietveld designed and built a house in Utrecht(1-3-15),which closely resembled van Doesburg's compositions.In1925,Oud no longer rsed van Doesburg's design as decorative elements,but designed the façade of his Café de Unie in Rotterdam with a Mondrian-like composition(1-3-16).As Hitchcock noted the influences of these painters penetrated many works of modern architects,including Mies van der Rohe:
Invarous house projects by Mies van der Rohe in the early '20s the influence of Van Doesburg is evident in the pattern of the floor plans.(1-3-17,18)And even in his latest work,now proceeding in Chicago,the arrangement of the extremely simple elements of his facades often seems to approaach very closely the rigid discipline of Mondrian.He abjures the accent of strongly colored areas,however,and prefers an almost clasic symmetry and regularity to occrlt balance,so that his explicit denial that this inflrence continues in hiw work can be accepted.It is to the very dissimilar abstract art of Paul Klee that Mies remains especially devoted.The subtlety and the mystery of the different possible relationships between modern architecture and abstract painting can hardly be better illustrated than by this fact.Around Mies as he develops his architectural designs in a spirit of Platonic purity and extreme mathematical simplification,hang a score of Klee's paintings,whose influence on these designs it is all but impossible even to glimpse;while the now entirely historical influence of Van Doesburg and Mondrian still seems evident to the observer of his buildings at Illinois Institute(1-3-19,20).
By this time,cubism or abstract arts principles were no longer just a vision or an experimental principle.Years of stuggle from imitating the past elements and styles had finally led to emancipation of a new spirit,and development of innovated architectural forms.Le Corbusier in France,Oud in Holland,Gropius(1-3-21)and Mies van der Rohe in Germany,were developing new expressions with new materials such as glass,steel,etc.This was particularly stimulating to the younger generation after the First World War.
The question is how this art movement related to political and social changes of the early 20th Century.It was a period of considerable social change and,a moment at which the moden technical orientatin was undergoing radical revision and realignment.Row argued that abstract art arose from feelings of anguish and bewilderment at the instability and obscurity of the world,and reflects an instinctive necessity to turn inward in search of order.Abstraction means drawing away,in the sense of becoming removed from reality.It was clearly necessary in order to prepare the way,sift through the confusion,and get down to basic qrinciples.”Inorder to deal with an otherwise confused world,and [these principles]are abstract,precisely in order to arrive at an appropriate level of formalism.”A philosophical movement of the time also shifted toward subjeet-centered reason,obsessed by meditation on reason and rationality.Le Corbusier pointen out that the modern sentiment was a spirit of geometry and a spirit of construction and synthesis.He further addressed the order of art is a necessity of social justice.”In the place of individualism and its fevered products，we prefer the commonplace,the everyday,the rule to the exception”．
Modern arts were of interest porecisely for content of learning and teaching developed in the Bauhaus educational program.Gropius translated these ideas of reform,developed during these periods of revolutionary and post-war years，into the curriculum．”The design classes at the Bauhaus were also concerned with incorporating part of the history of the ideas of the contemporary art of the time.Probably no-one would deny that the teaching was influenced by cubism,constructivism and Dadaism”．
'Bauhaus'is now a catchphrase,a style that is either hated or admired by many．But it also represents a breakthrough and new spirit at the turn of the 20th century．The methodologies and ideologies of its teaching staffs directly influenced many contemporary architectural educators and writers．As Gillian Naylor noted,＂What is unique about the Bauhaus is the fact that its ideologies epitomise changing concepts concerning the nature and purpose of design in the early twentieth century.The school inherited,reinterpreted and then rejected the craft ideals of the nineteenth century;it attempten to discover 'laws' in art that could be related to design and architecture , and its fundamental aim was to establish a universal language of form that would represent the elimination of social as well as national barriers .”
The Bauhaus Manifesto(1-4-1) , which set out the aims and program of the schoos and was published throughout Germany,was clearly visionary and revolrtionary:
The ultimate aim of all creativity is the building ! The decoration of buildings was once the noblest function of the fine arts , and the fine arts were indispensable to great architecture . Today they exist in complacent isolation , and can only be rescued from it by conscious co-operation and collaboration of all craftsmen….
The old art schools were unable to produce this unity;and how , indeed ,should they have done so ,since art cannot be taught?Schools must be absorbed by the workshop again . The world of the pattern-designet and applied artist , consisting only of drawing and painting ,must at last and again become a world in which things are built….
Let us together desire , conceive and create the new building of the future , which will combine everything-architecture and sculpture and pinting-in a single form which will one day rise towards the heavens from the hands of a million workers as the crystalline symbol of a new and coming faith.
It sounds not really novel if Renaissance Alberta's school which united art ,sculpture and architecture under one roof is still remembered . This Manifesto stressed on craftsmanship , and artists and architecture brought together to create the “building of the future”. For Gropes ,it was through “building”that previously separate disciplines were re-united again. “Building”be-came the core of a social,intellectual and symbolic activity(1-4-2).
It was Groupie's original idea to pass on commissions from his architectural office into Barhaus for design and production.Yet ,this ideal of joint work on the “building”,the most important of the Bauhaus goals, proved to be difficult to implerealized. In 1920 ,Adolph Summerfield ,a timber merchant and one of the first patrons of the school,commissioned Gropes to build a house from tead he had acquired from a dismantled ship . This house provided Marcel Breuer , Joust Schmidt and Josef Albers , three of the students who were to teach at the school ,with the opportunity to carry out the commission , rather than experimental work . Breuer ,who was a cabinet-maker ,designed the furniture . Schmidt , trained as a sculptor ,carved complex reliees on the staircases and doors , symbolized the activities of the timber industry(1-4-3). Albers , who was very sensitive and creative with materials , designed and prepared the stained-glass windows with abstract patterns(1-4-4). The carving , the vindows , and the panelling of the interior all relate to that unity of form ,expression and decoration . All of the production was mde in Bauhaus workshop.
For the structure of the school , Gropius adopted architect Otto Bartning's concept of a “Council of Masters”,a preferred echo to the Beaux-Art system instead of using “Professors”and “students”in conventoional academia．Here,a hierarchy of apprentice-journeyman-master was developed . Students were to be taught by both a Master of Form and Master of Craft . Different workshops for craft training were formed and could be categorized into sculpture , metal work , cabinet making , painting and decorating ,printing and weaving .Both Gropius and the Council of M asters monitored the success and results of workshop training and regularly introduced reforms . For example , the original ruling allowing students to go straight into a workshop was proved to be ineffective and wasteful in materials . The Council of Masters therefore resolved to make Itten's six-month Basic Course compulsory for all entry students . Only students who successfully passed this course could go on to join a workshop.
After the six-month Basic Course the students sqent much of the next three years on theoretical work , including studies of nature ,fabrics , geometry , colour and composition ,constructions and presentations ,materials and tools.
Although he did not teach at Bauhaus , the arrival of van Doesburg , one in Weimar in 1921 , had a profound influence on the school(1-4-5).As Droste noted , it even became necessary for Gropius to expressly forbid students from cutting out-as they frequently did-the illustrations from the de Stijl magazine to which the Bauhaus subscribed . The students even painted the ceiling and walls of the Weimar Residence theatre under de Stijl influence . Droste further commented that although the ideas of the Bauhaus and van Doesburg were in many cases identical , van Doesburg's criticism and the clear , constructive forms of de Stijl products served to precipitate and accelerate the Bauhaus'move towards a new style . One of the nored changes was the elementary form and primary colors became the starting-points for design .
Although almost all the teachers were brought together in Gropius'Bauhaus , there were apparetly two definitions of art in the school which triggered conflicts and uncertainties . Itten , who was profoundly influential in the early staes of Bauhaus , represented the art teachers who believed art was the driving force behind students'internal creativity .Art was the philosophy , technology , only the medium with which to express it .Meanwhile the architects in the school led by Gropius believed art lay within the new technology and materials themselves , objectively existing outside the student's mind .Students had to learn functions ,new materials and constructions and all related sciedces to be able to recreate a modern building-as-art work .Here the opposite is emphasized:now art is the expression ,technology and science , the philosophy . Le Corbusier , another modernist of the same period , strongly disagreed with Gropius , and other German masters by arguing that functionalism did not necessarily produce beauty ,and that art was quite independent of utility .Howeve ,Gropius determined to lead the school into anther direction ,and so began the problems of Bauhaus as an educational model .The root cause was ideology.
In 1922,the year when ltten left Bauhaus ,Gropius sought to give the school a new purpose and direction. In the years following the defeat in the First World War ,Germany suffered from lack of essential imports of raw materials .Greman research and industry gradually concentrated on developing substitutes ,and devising and promoting industrial standardization .Therefore ,Bauhars publicized a new slogan: “…art and technology ,a new unity…”. Bauhaus design of this perid was to address the question of function .Form had to be appropriate to its function.Marcel Breuer illustrated this principle with examples of a teapot , coffeepot , cream jug and sugar pot ,which were completely differdnt . They did not match each other at all. “Since each of them satisfies our requirements without disturbiong the other ,their combination creates our style .Their overall unity lies in their relatively best fulfilment of their specific functions. This new Bauhauw design was favoured as it had a successful exhibition of its products in 1924 Leipzig trade fair for commercial art .
However ,this change of ideology and penetration of art into industry caused much tension among the artist-teachers .Georg Muche(1-4-6), for example ,criticized that “the creative artist was superfluous when it came to designing forms for industry. The form process started not from the elementary forms and primary colors investigated by the artists ,but from the working of machine…The artistic form element is a foreign body in the industrial product .Technical requirements make art a useless extra.”In 1926 ,Both Muche and Mogoly-Nagy resigned(1-4-7,8).Internal problems of the fundamental nature of the school continued,and Gropius suddenly announced his resignation in 1927 ,just a year after moving into the new school buildings in Dessau .Of the original staff members ,only Kandinsky and Albers remained when Hannes Meyer took over the directorship.
Hannes Meyer was hostile to painters in general and the way they dominated the Bauhaus .He had always felt that the Bauhaus should have become a technical college. He grounded his course in psychology,sociology and economics. “This seems to be the first appearance in any school of design of psychologists and sociologists ,entirely at Meyer's initiative .When he first arrived as Bauhaus'department head of architecture ,he immediately laid down guidelines for his teaching activities: “the basic tendency of my teaching will absolutely be functional ,collectivist ,[and]constructive in the spirit of 'a/b/c'”.He also noted that the history of the Bauhaus could be divided into three stages:first in Weimar ,born that the history of the Bauhaus could be divided into three stages:first in Weimar,born out of chaos;the second formalistic phase in Dessau;and the third in Dessau under his leadership ,during which the Bauhaus addressed “the real issues of life and society.”(1-4-9)The program structure at Bauhaus was changed drastically to give architecture a more prominent position .However he never totally abandoned art instruction. He simply attempted to accentuate architecture by expanding the curriculum and by creating a division between a “scientifically objective”and “artistically exqressive”direction .Theprogram's “artistic”direction was derived from the Basic Course taught by Josef Albers . The program's “artistic”direction was derived from the Basic Course taught by Josef Albers. Thearchitecture department represented the scientific arm of the program ,and all other departments eventually had to orient themselves toward it .His vision of design was , “Building is nothing but organization:social, technical , economical , psychological organization.”Therefore ,architecture was taught as more or less a collection and calculation of data ,an automatic result of careful analysis .There was an obvious switch in the product of Bauhaus design at this stage .As Droste noted ,Meyer's most significant achievements as an architecture teacher of Bauhaus remain the systematic and scientific bases upon which he placed the design process and its implementation in practical and theoretical teaching.
In 1930 when Meyer was dismissed and Mies van der Rohe was appointed as the new director of Bauhaus ,the school had been reduced to regular academy for architecture .Under his new leadership ,the program was revised again with even less artistic expression than before .Psychology and sociology were eliminated from the curriculum and replaced ,iin Mies'words ,by: 'handicraft ,technical and artistic training'(1-4-10).The Basic Course ,which was still considered the ideological core of the training until then ,was no longer mandatory(1-4-11).Students could bypass the Basic Course and ,in the Second Stage ,could enter directly into the Workshop on Principles of Building with no need to gain experience in the other craft workshops .They were taught construction law ,statistics ,heating and ventilation ,materials ,mathematics and physics .
Further ,student representation at the Council of Masters was no longer allowed .Final decision-making uthority now rested chiefly with the director himself .Overall ,teaching increasingl resembled other technical school ,but here with narrow focus on modern technology .Losing of all its original creative and multi dimensional objectives ,Bauhaus became a job-training school producing graduates who could cope with large design works which followed the Second World War.