[HN Gopher] Exploring Bauhaus: Revolutionary design school that ...
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Exploring Bauhaus: Revolutionary design school that shaped modern
world
Author : thunderbong
Score : 93 points
Date : 2024-03-11 05:11 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.playforthoughts.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.playforthoughts.com)
| johncoltrane wrote:
| See also, the Ulm School of Design:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulm_School_of_Design
| throwawayyy9237 wrote:
| I'm no expert in design, but it's really interesting to see the
| signs that a design "won". That is, when you see echoes and
| influnces of it everywhere.
| snowpid wrote:
| It is worth to note, that more architects love the design than
| the average German. There is a huge district in the south of
| Berlin called Gropiusstadt (designed by Walter Gropius) which is
| so unpopular that only lower class people live there. While pre
| Bauhaus buildings are very popular in Germany. Bauhaus and its
| predecessors is more a problem than a solution.
| aeyes wrote:
| I'd argue that this has nothing to do with Bauhaus because this
| district was planned to have 90% social housing. Of course
| cramping 30k+ low income workers (or unemployed people) into a
| small space is going to cause trouble.
|
| And if I remember correctly the original plans were changed and
| the buildings ended up much higher and denser to meet the goals
| of the city.
|
| Edit: Found this article which states that the plans were
| modified by Wils Ebert, Gropius had no say in this.
| https://www.goethe.de/ins/au/en/kul/arc/bau/21319032.html
| snowpid wrote:
| I still see my point standing that modern architecture is
| very unpopular in Germany.
| qwytw wrote:
| Brutalism (which generally most/many people seem to
| dislike) isn't the same as Bauhaus though.
|
| > modern architecture is very unpopular in Germany
|
| IMHO it has much more to do with the constraints of the 50s
| and 60s. All major cities in Germany were destroyed and had
| to be rebuilt fast and cheap. Of course buildings from the
| late 19th/early 20th century might have looked a lot nicer
| but they were also massively more expensive (would you
| rather many cheap and ugly high density buildings or a few
| better looking expensive ones, it's not like there were
| that many other options).
| snowpid wrote:
| Many, many, many, many of pre WWI buildings were
| constrained by budget and had poor inhabitants. Today
| they are very popular (and nobody poor can afford it
| anymore)
| usrusr wrote:
| Where I live it was a close call between rebuilding in
| modern layouts (car-friendly and that entire "block in a
| park landscape" approach that I consider the biggest
| failure of 20th century architecture, nobody likes these
| "parks" that are too close to buildings to feel public
| and too open to feel private) and rebuilding in the old
| layout, with houses on the edge of the street enclosing
| hidden backyards, roof lines closely matching pre-war
| roof lines.
|
| Old layout won and today everybody is very happy about
| that. But wherever there are old stock buildings and post
| war reconstruction buildings in the same street, the old
| ones are considered much higher standard, despite best
| efforts to avoid modernism in the reconstruction. From
| today's perspective, the actual age difference between
| one group and the other is laughably small. But in the
| rush to rebuild post war, the "good enough" threshold was
| so much lower than pre WWI the difference echoes on
| through the renovations to this day.
| lukan wrote:
| Because labour was cheap and plenty, when they were built
| with hand with bricks. Also some survivorship bias, as
| many badly build ones, did not survive the bombs so well.
|
| After WW2 it was mainly cheap concrete.
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| I am from Germany and your point is valid. Older
| buildings are preferred because the alternative is those
| build in the 50s fast and cheap.
|
| But it's untrue that only rich people live in old
| buildings. Maybe in some parts. But most old buildings
| are in the poorer regions of the inner city. Most rich
| people I know live in modern buildings. Some in older but
| very well remade ones...
| rickdeckard wrote:
| Might be controversial, but in my opinion the impact (and long-
| lasting aesthetic) of Bauhaus is much more visible in the
| industrial design of modern products than it is in
| architecture.
|
| After all, a consumer product can win by individual choice of
| the consumer, with failed attempts of interpreting Bauhaus
| design disappearing again, which makes it easy to cite good
| examples of lasting Bauhaus style over time (i.e. showing
| similarity of Braun products with Apple design, etc.).
|
| But a failed interpretation of Bauhaus in _Architecture_
| continues to live among us for decades, watering down the value
| of well-executed Bauhaus design with an appearance of being a
| cheap bland building...
| ethanbond wrote:
| Every Chipotle in America is part of the Bauhaus lineage.
| Wildly common, if not "popular."
| qwytw wrote:
| Gropiusstadt isn't exactly the best example of Bauhaus though.
| IIRC Gropius original plan was changed a lot to maximize
| capacity/minimize cost, the buildings were only supposed to
| have 5 stories or less etc. I don't think those issues have
| anything to do with the the specific style.
| keiferski wrote:
| For anyone that wants to read a critical take of Bauhaus and
| modernist architecture in general, check out the very funny
| _From Bauhaus to Our House_ by Tom Wolfe.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Bauhaus_to_Our_House
|
| His other book on art was pretty good too, and both were
| received very poorly by their respective industries, which is
| probably a sign that he was on to something.
| joarv0249nw wrote:
| Siemensstadt seemed pretty nice.
| usrusr wrote:
| Those ambitious Weimar era housing estates in Berlin are all
| awesome, with their careful balance between efficiency and
| preventing excessive cookie-cutter.
|
| It's interesting to contrast them with their less modernist
| "Gemeindebau" contemporaries in Vienna, which share some
| ideas and contrast in many others. In my opinion the Vienna
| ones deserve far more attention than they get (than they get
| outside Vienna?). I guess their biggest hindrance to fame is
| that there are so many of them, and that the biggest ones
| that unsurprisingly draw all the attention (e.g. the match
| made in heaven of Karl Marx Hof and George Washington Hof)
| aren't quite as interesting as their entirety, in particular
| the continuity through Anschluss, war and the aftermath.
| lukas099 wrote:
| > so unpopular that only lower class people live there.
|
| Sounds like Bauhaus was better at building affordable housing
| than other styles.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| Good article, but a weird choice to focus so much on Bauhaus
| architecture and so little on Bauhaus and its influence
| especially on industrial design (IMO a much more significant
| impact of Bauhaus in the modern world).
| xnx wrote:
| Indeed. To my untrained eye there seems a clear line from
| Bauhaus to Dieter Rams to Apple
| (https://www.cultofmac.com/188753/the-braun-products-that-
| ins...)
| JusticeJuice wrote:
| They had a teaching ethos that architecture was the center of
| design education, and that all skills, such as material
| practice, aesthetic graphic skills, color theory, etc., all
| lead towards building design.
|
| I suspect this attitude spills over into what people view as
| their 'best' work.
|
| https://smarthistory.org/the-bauhaus-and-bau/
| rickdeckard wrote:
| Agree, but I'm not sure that explicitly Bauhaus building
| design actually "shapes the modern world" as stated in the
| title.
|
| I'd argue that only a fraction of well-designed buildings in
| your surrounding actually embody the Bauhaus ethos and its
| derived aesthetics, but possibly a majority of well-designed
| products around you do.
| pgtan wrote:
| That article not even mention Bauhaus in Tel Aviv!
|
| https://bauhaus-center.com/bauhaus-in-tel-aviv/
| trevithick wrote:
| Earlier HN discussion on this topic (different article):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30270286
|
| I mentioned Tom Wolfe's book "From Bauhaus to Our House." I don't
| think he likes Bauhaus much.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41001.From_Bauhaus_to_Ou...
| rendang wrote:
| An even more extreme response to modernism is Ann Sussman's
| claim that it originated from trauma and mental illness:
|
| https://commonedge.org/the-mental-disorders-that-gave-us-mod...
|
| Although I agree with her that traditional, ornamental design
| is more beautiful, something bothers me about her line of
| argument; it seems cheap and patronizing to take ideas
| expressed with rigor and good faith by talented people and
| dismiss them w/o engaging them intellectually. Nevertheless,
| its an interesting point of view
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > it remains a symbol of a modern approach to architecture and
| design.
|
| As if that's a good thing. I see someone else has already
| referenced "From Bauhaus to Our House."
|
| The bottom line is just this: Bauhaus is _ugly_. It does not
| uplift people 's spirits and it does not make us happy. The
| authors inadvertently give the best argument against it:
|
| > Many also believed that only dedicated craftsman, with their
| hands-on approach, could produce the highest quality work. They
| argued that machine production inevitably led to a decline in
| aesthetic quality. Furthermore, they contended that individuals
| surrounded by such unattractive surroundings lacked an
| appreciation for beauty.
| lukas099 wrote:
| I'm not an architect or anything, and I think Bauhaus looks
| awesome. And sure I wish we could all live in perfect craftsman
| houses painstakingly put together with a hammer and nails but
| that's not realistic.
| hammock wrote:
| My idea of a perfect house involves post-and-beam
| construction with no nails at all and only traditional
| joinery :)
|
| Although I know a guy who takes down really old buildings and
| regularly sees hand-wrought nails, those are cool too
| ainiriand wrote:
| Do you mean traditional Japanese joinery? Because for sure
| the traditional western joinery involved nails.
| hammock wrote:
| Mortise and tenon. Found all over the world, some of the
| earliest examples are in europe
| bombcar wrote:
| You also have whatever it is using pegs -
| https://yankeebarnhomes.com/2017/12/14/post-beam-vs-
| timber-f...
|
| Though that may be just a variation of mortise and tenon.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| False choice. It's not "my way or insane expense."
| atoav wrote:
| You probably don't know how utterly dysfunctional for example a
| typical _kitchen_ looked before Bauhaus. See Magarete Schutte-
| Lihotzkys Frankfurt Kitchen:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_kitchen
|
| The cliche Bauhaus style people know is not the thing that had
| the impact, everything else was.
| astrange wrote:
| Is that supposed to be a good or bad kitchen? It looks hard
| to move around in, but the colors are nice.
| usrusr wrote:
| It's a amazing kitchen. This isn't V8 suburbia, where
| garages are bigger than what an entire working class family
| or two lived in in interwar Europe.
| atoav wrote:
| No I don't think you understand: _before that_ kitchens
| generally looked very different and were much more
| dysfunctional. The reason you don 't find it very
| spectacular from a 2024 perspective is because that kitchen
| design was so successful it changed how kitchens looked
| after it. So you will certainly find better (but also
| worse) kitchens today, but that kitchen design had a ton of
| impact on how things are looking today.
|
| Before that the typical kitchen furniture were single
| freestanding objects, like this stove: https://upload.wikim
| edia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5b/Fr...
|
| But it is more than surface, Schutte-Lihotzky went and
| measured how long certain tasks were taking and optimized
| the layout and objects of the kitchen to minimize the waste
| of time, aomething that before that wasn't really a thing
| in residential kitchens.
| bombcar wrote:
| That itself says it was a designed kitchen for a particular
| use case.
|
| And it incorporates things like varying countertop heights,
| etc.
|
| Looks workable to me - remember kitchens were not "open
| concept" at the time, nor made for multiple people operating
| in them at once.
| Shog9 wrote:
| I think atoav was crediting Bauhaus with the modern
| kitchen, with the Frankfurt Kitchen as an early success
| story.
|
| Which is both fair and faintly damning, as what has been
| lost along the way (functional design that makes good use
| of limited space) was perhaps more important than the clean
| lines and shiny veneer which was retained.
|
| Or maybe I'm just projecting. Been cooking on glass-topped
| stoves for the past few months and that tends to make me
| irritable.
| lostemptations5 wrote:
| Bauhaus is kind of fun and cool-- even playful. I totally
| disagree that it's depressing.
| wnc3141 wrote:
| Love that book. Tom Wolfe's dry wit is a joy.
|
| However the modernism originating with bauhaus can be applied
| tactfully with enhanced functionality (I.e larger unobstructed
| spaces- but in limited fashion. Too often it strips the
| humanity away from our spaces.
|
| A stunning example of such modernism: Aarhus City Hall, Denmark
| Log_out_ wrote:
| The problem is also nowadays the decoration, ornamental or
| pictures could be machined into wall elements quiet chiefly.
| Imagine a house with walls of family history moments. Today
| bauhaus is mostly a symbol of the terror rule of the economic
| over the aestetic and the suppression of individualism in
| architecture.
| paradox460 wrote:
| If you are ever fortunate enough to book a stay at the Aspen
| Institute or Aspen Conference Center in Colorado, you're in for a
| Bauhaus treat.
|
| My family used to take fairly regular trips up there; the LIGO
| planning meetings were held at the ACC, and so we'd typically
| lodge either there or in nearby Snowmass, which also is home to a
| large number of Bauhaus designs.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| Colorado in general has some amazing architecture, including
| residential architecture. I saw a lot of this style when I was
| there: https://kellyandstonearchitects.com/portfolio/completed-
| port...
| codethief wrote:
| Does this style have a name?
| Dig1t wrote:
| I often wonder how much of the design aesthetic is due to Apple.
|
| Apple turned bauhaus into the "premium" aesthetic, at least in
| the US. So many companies just copy their premium style from
| Apple with slight variations, I wonder how much of its presence
| in our world is simply due to everyone trying to associate
| themselves with the "premium"/minimalist aesthetic that Apple has
| cultivated.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| I think it's the other way around. Apple was heavily inspired
| by Braun/Dieter Rams. When I look at this work I immediately
| think premium. And this was long before Apple.
| hackernoteng wrote:
| The future will be shaped by Minecraft. I foresee very blocky
| looking buildings.
| JR1427 wrote:
| Did it bother anyone else that in the photo of the Wassily chair
| in the article, only one of the little feet is in the correct
| orientation?
|
| Without commenting on the overall design, the fact that this can
| apparently happen smacks of bad design to me, at least in the
| details.
| kansface wrote:
| Those are removable for carpet ... or maybe addable for hard
| floors is more accurate. Someone just put them on upside down
| on the front and then photoshopped out all context. See
| https://www.knoll.com/product/wassily-chair
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I think what made these good design is that they were pioneers.
| Consider the eames chair. Plenty of people lust after one, they
| are worth more than a used car. I have sat in one but there
| wasn't any magic or anything. Any recliner feels the same. But
| that being said my perspective is from a world post eames
| chair. Before this chair maybe there wasn't a comparable
| experience at all among what people were usually buying for
| chairs.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I think the real sell with bauhaus design is that it was and is
| super cheap. Look at these examples in the article. Simple forms.
| Simple materials. Cheap and fast. Compare that with an earlier
| building like the empire state building and we see the exact
| opposite. More complex forms. More craftsmanship required to
| create the overall decor and trim designs, and no doubt more cost
| compared to a bauhaus style building one could make with some
| chicken wire, plaster, and cheap windows. Its kind of a shame
| then that the international standard today has basically been the
| fast and cheap bauhaus inspired 5/1 style building, in a sort of
| race to the bottom away from the building forms that once defined
| a place.
| hammock wrote:
| Cf. IKEA
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Not just ikea but all the cheap melamine board furniture out
| there today takes inspiration from the bauhaus philosophy.
| And also the fact melamine board is so cheap and comes
| finished.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's also the real problem with Bauhaus (and IKEA) - if you're
| going for cheap and fast, you're not going to stop at "cheap
| enough whilst still being durable, etc".
|
| IKEA has some wonderful furniture that is cheap and fast, but
| cannot survive being moved. And Bauhaus has some cheap and fast
| buildings, but they cannot survive being unmaintained - _which
| is often what happens to buildings that were built to be
| cheapest_.
| milesvp wrote:
| I think it may be unfortunate to lump Ikea in with Bauhaus.
| While I agree with the general sentiment that Ikea tends to
| be single use, the idea of the flatpack was truly
| revolutionary. Shipping furniture used to be crazy expensive,
| but the idea of designing a bookcase that could take minimal
| space to ship and let the customer with no tools other than a
| screwdriver and a hammer put it together was truly a leap
| that I'm not sure many at the time were prepared to take.
| antiterra wrote:
| > truly a leap that I'm not sure many at the time were
| prepared to take.
|
| I mean, at least one other company took the leap a few
| years before Ikea did: Sauder.
| bombcar wrote:
| And to be fair to IKEA they have a decent amount of higher
| quality flatpack furniture (as do others in the space) that
| do survive a move much better than cardboard and particle
| board pieces do.
|
| Those pieces are more expensive, usually.
| fragmede wrote:
| and their flatpack's just better. I've bought stuff off
| Wayfair and the like, but Ikea flatpack is better
| engineered to make the assembly process nicer.
| bombcar wrote:
| I have a dresser from Target that came flat packed, and
| it was as nice as anything from Ikea.
|
| Part of it was using "real screws" that screw into wood
| at places, instead of twist/lock fasteners or whatever
| those are.
|
| Of course, if you also _glue_ it, you get something
| surprisingly durable.
| fragmede wrote:
| to each their own I _like_ those twist lock fasteners
| bombcar wrote:
| They work great until a few years later when things start
| to get loose (at least in my experience, when embedded in
| particle board).
| baby wrote:
| I don't see the problem with moving IKEA furniture.
| patrickk wrote:
| To your point:
|
| https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/10/why-you-hate-contempo...
| psunavy03 wrote:
| I don't really hate contemporary architecture, because
| postmodern architecture at least has some variety and style
| to it. Modernism (especially but not limited to Brutalism) is
| just soulless, totalitarian, oppressive, and depressing.
|
| It's also ironic for the author to claim that a style which
| peaked 100-130 years after the beginning of the Industrial
| Revolution is somehow the fault of global capitalism, as if
| global capitalism hadn't been a thing for 100+ years by the
| 1950s.
|
| And of course even though the author is claiming that the
| left has flaws in their approach to architecture, they still
| have to make the obligatory supplication about the right's
| alleged "ulterior motives."
|
| For all the severe flaws in Modernist architecture, this
| article seems a bit of a hash, honestly. The author seems
| trapped inside their own ideological bubble.
|
| Edit:
|
| > It should be obvious to anyone that skyscrapers should be
| abolished. After all, they embody nearly every bad tendency
| in contemporary architecture: they are not part of nature,
| they are monolithic, they are boring, they have no intricacy,
| and they have no democracy. Besides, there is plenty of space
| left on earth to spread out horizontally; the only reasons to
| spread vertically are phallic and Freudian.
|
| Oh, good effing grief.
| netcan wrote:
| > the only reasons to spread vertically are phallic and
| Freudian.
|
| Lol. I agree.
|
| OTOH... An over the top, ideological take on art is kind of
| traditional in architecture. I could easily imagine a
| reincarnated Ayn Rand argueing _for_ skyscrapers for these
| exact reasons. Phalic inspiration representing the taming
| of nature and challenge to God.
|
| In 2024, a slapfight between Andy Warhol and a local dress
| designer about the colour orange... That was the kind of
| conflict avante garde artists had to have so the rest of us
| could benefit from a stream of new artistic ideas. A
| sacrifice.
|
| These days... everyone gets dragged in.
|
| I kind of like brutalism, personally. It took some bad
| turns, but I'm hoping for a comeback. Maybe we should do
| paint this time though.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Skyscrapers are phallic because of the engineering
| constraints of stacking floors upon one another.
| Airplanes and missiles are phallic because of the
| engineering constraints of rocketry and aerodynamics.
| Guns are phallic because of the engineering constraints
| of using gunpowder to propel a small metal bullet.
|
| For crying out loud, form follows function and sometimes
| a cigar is just a freaking cigar.
| entropie wrote:
| Everybody seems to hate it. From a pure optical perspective I
| find the Pualinum in Leipzig a masterpiece.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulinum_%28University_of_Leip.
| ..
|
| But I heard it gets really hot inside, which sucks if you
| have to study there. In my opinion, functionality should
| always be prioritized higher than aesthetics.
| m463 wrote:
| Maybe the pipeline that produces cheap product is actually fed
| by bauhaus graduates.
|
| In other words interesting iconic creations come from mavericks
| who are self-soveriegn, while go to school, get a job, work in
| an office type creations are a series of compromises with many
| requirements to fulfill and many fingers in the pot.
| netcan wrote:
| >I think the real sell with bauhaus design is that it was and
| is super cheap.
|
| Cheap isn't a bad thing. The reasothat some of the best ideas
| in architecture are irrelevant is specifically avoiding
| integrating economics into them.
|
| That said, all of modernism basically followed this path.
| Talented, quality work in the early 30th century. A
| formalisation of the ideas and principles.
|
| Adoption by a second generation (post wwwii) who liked it
| mostly for its legible formality... a crappy generation of work
| as the principles were applied by those going for "good enough"
| and no more. Same thing happened to brutalism and other
| modernist schools.
|
| An analogy might be open offices. An energetic reimagining of
| office life by early Google or whatnot. No expense spared.
| Reasons, ideas, ideology behind the design.
|
| Pretty soon, all the lower tier companies were doing crappy
| open offices because it's cheaper, Google do it and it's
| better. Here read this article about idea sharing in open
| spaces. Did I mention it's cheaper?
| mmustapic wrote:
| > Compare that with an earlier building like the empire state
| building and we see the exact opposite.
|
| > More complex forms. More craftsmanship required to create the
| overall decor and trim designs, and no doubt more cost compared
| to a bauhaus style building one could make with some chicken
| wire, plaster, and cheap windows.
|
| The Empire State was built in 410 days.
| d--b wrote:
| I don't know the field all that well, but my feeling is that
| Bauhaus is overrated.
|
| The architecture of the school buildings themselves is quite
| remarkable, but as a school, it din't really work. The professors
| were acclaimed artists, but the alumni aren't all that well-known
| and as far as I know haven't contributed enormously to the field
| of arts and design.
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| Mid century design is a good example of very good bauhaus design.
| One of my favorites.
| silent_cal wrote:
| I hate Bauhaus
| crowcroft wrote:
| I find that there's often something very subtle in Bauhaus design
| that can make things awful very quickly.
|
| Sometimes I see 'Bauhaus' style things and I think they're
| incredible, but then very slight variations of that same thing
| immediately look ghastly to me, but I can never quite put my
| finger on what it is. I think there's a certain kind of purity
| required in the design to make sure the simple look works.
|
| I think this is also why Bauhaus design often ages terrible.
| Immaculate plaster walls can look nice, but the second they age,
| get weathered or develop a 'patina' they look awful.
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