THE HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD AND ITS
4.4. The Bauhaus of Germany
96 | P a g e Vienna Secession deeply influenced European architectural education and practise. The construction, or making of architecture by combining science and technology with art and craft, defined a new, integrated mode of architectural training – an ideology which indirectly seemed to have influenced the evolution of the Bauhaus.
97 | P a g e The workshop system created the possibility of selling the products which were largely hand- crafted. Van de Velde, however, lauded the works of the engineer and the beauty of machine- made objects, a radical departure from the usual ideologies and methods of the Arts and Crafts Schools. Dearstyne (1962) refers to a passage from a lecture by Van de Velde, titled “The role of engineers in modern architecture”, which epitomises his admiration of the opportunities of modern technology: “There is a class of people from whom we can no longer withhold the title of artist. Their work is founded, on the one hand, upon the employment of materials whose use was hitherto unknown and, on the other, upon an audacity so extraordinary as even to surpass that of the cathedral builders. These artists, the creators of the new architecture, are the engineers... For them no doubt exists about the laws of which we have spoken [the laws, still valid, which guided creation in the Gothic period], and the effect of these laws is so certain, so undisputed (the only agency which is certain and able eternally to produce new and beautiful things) that they must be looked upon as the only ones which have bestowed new and beautiful forms upon mankind. The exceptional beauty which resides in the works of the engineers springs from the fact that this beauty was as little aware of itself as was the unconscious beauty of the Gothic cathedrals ....I have often mentioned locomotives, steamboats, machines and bridges; one should also not forget, among modern creations whose beauty has attracted us, the first English baby carriages, the various fixtures of laundries and bathrooms, electric lamps, surgical instruments, etc ...”(Dearstyne 1962:15).
Implicit in Van de Velde’s admiration of the opportunities of the machine, was the acceptance of the principle of mass production and reproduction afforded by modern technology. Van de Velde continued on the rediscovery of basic truths and universal formulae which impacted on the architectural methods of the generations to follow. Furthermore, he stressed the essential role of construction as captured below in Dearstyne (1962:15):
“What I recognize to be ... the crux of all the artistic endeavours of our time is a yearning for a new harmony and a new aesthetic clarity. I adhere to this by proclaiming in the arts and crafts the sole principle which, in my opinion, is valid – that of construction. And I extend this structural principle just as far as I possibly can to architecture as well as to household utensils, to clothing and to jewellery. I strive to eliminate from the decorative arts everything which degrades them by making them meaningless and I wish to replace the old symbolic elements, in whose efficacy we no longer believe, by a beauty which is new and equally imperishable”.
98 | P a g e Dearstyne (1962) attributes the physical and doctrinal foundations of the Bauhaus to Van de Velde. According to Dearstyne (1962), Van de Velde conceptualised the reunification of the arts long before Gropius did. His introduction of the workshop system in Weimar, as the principal pedagogic space became the cornerstone of the Bauhaus system. Gropius later adopted the workshop system and the sales of its products, first in Weimar and later in Dessau.
It was Van de Velde’s admiration of the value of the machine and the beauty of its products and utility that was later adopted by the Bauhaus. In fact, Van de Velde’s doctrine of 1894 was still too radical to be adopted by the Bauhaus, in its infancy in 1919, which then continued to pursue form over function (Dearstyne 1962).
It was from the opportunities of industrial production rather than the atelier system of the Beaux-Arts that the Bauhaus emerged. Walter Gropius stated in "The Idea of Structure"(1923) that the Bauhaus would endeavour "determinedly to transfer and to practice the ideas of its predecessors Ruskin and Morris, Van de Velde and the Darmstadt group" and to "gather all creative art activities into one unity ... the great building" (Walter Gropius in Howarth 1959:29). In Bauhaus 1919-1928 he further states, "Let us create a new guild of craftsmen" and
"the Bauhaus believes the machine to be our modern medium of design and seeks to come to terms with it" (Howarth 1959:29). Westphal confirms that, according to the pedagogical ideas of Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus did have affinities with the English Arts and Crafts movement of Ruskin and Morris as well as with the reformist educationalists such as Rousseau, Pestalozzi and Froebel (Westphal 1991). The fundamental influence of Van de Velde was implicitly embedded in the Bauhaus pedagogy and its principal learning space, the workshop.
The Bauhaus started off successfully with some significant architects of the time being involved in tuition. After the first few years, however, differences of opinion within the organisation and political pressures from authorities forced the closure of the school. Gropius resigned in 1928. Hans Meyer succeeded Gropius and similarly resigned in 1930, followed by Mies van der Rohe. In 1932 the government of Anhalt closed the Bauhaus in Dessau and relocated it to Berlin as a private institution which eventually and finally shut down in 1933 (Howarth 1959:29). This is unfortunate, as political imperative reigned superior over a liberal education system of one of the most respected systems of architectural education of the modern era. Despite the demise of the Bauhaus School, the integrated approach of the Bauhaus continued to greatly influence the evolution of architectural education far beyond Europe.
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