100 Years Bauhaus. What Interest Do We Take In Modern Movement Today?

Abstract

The Bauhaus had a pioneering influence on design worldwide which still
endures today. Through education, experimentation and materialization, a
revolution took place in the use of space, combining clarity, fluidity,
functionality and beauty. The Weimar/Dessau school is remembered – from
Gropius’ Weimar office to the Dessau masters’ houses, interiors and
furniture – for its avant-garde approach to architecture, urbanism, and
design for mass production and commercialization. While the objects it
produced are its material legacy, the human body (or Oskar Schlemer’s
“Human being”) was definitively at the centre of this experimental work.
The unity between spirit and body spurred a quest into health,
movement, hygiene, comfort, and rationality. The aim here is to
demonstrate how this concept was achieved within a new use of space
through innovative interior design. Materials and forms, as well as
reinvigorated bodily awareness contributed to this transformation. The
question is, how did Bauhaus’ “bodies” and “minds” challenge traditional
ideas about daily life shaping the connection between physical and
mental harmony. Using Gideon’s writings, namely “Mechanization takes
command” and interior design case studies acquired in Japan, the goal of
this paper is a threefold analysis: to explore the way the Bauhaus has
inspired modern movement architecture up to the present day, to
transform firstly space, and secondly, its use. Finally, the concept of
the body: how Bauhaus ideas have migrated around the world to
simultaneously promote a clear and hygienic aesthetic, connecting
function and abstraction; to demonstrate, beyond das neue sachlichkeit,
how one may realize the truth of Novalis’ metaphor: “the more poetic,
the more truthful.”