Today's arrangements, largely refer to the past. Many designers are revisiting old styles and weaving them into contemporary design in a modern way. This is also the case with references to the Bauhaus, which is appearing in increasingly daring versions in interiors. What exactly was the original Bauhaus and what were the designs created in this trend?
The Bauhaus school building in Dessau
About the origins of the Bauhaus
Theorigins of the Bauhaus are associated with the architect Walter Gropius. After World War I, he took over as director at the School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar and decided to merge it with the Academy of Fine Arts. The academy was to educate a group of designers destined to take an active part in the reconstruction of the postwar world.
This was the beginning of changes in art education. Carpentry and carpentry merged with painting and sculpture. A graduate of the school was an artist, craftsman and industrial designer in one. Gropius was of the opinion that artists should not compete with modern machines, but embrace their presence and make them tools to support their work.
Among Weimar's conservative community, however, avant-garde ideas were associated with spreading socialist thought, and thus with scorn. As a result, in 1925 the school was moved to the industrial city of Dessau, where the Bauhaus building and the lecturers' apartments, the so-called "masters' houses," were built.
Subsequent administrators of the school were Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The institution, however, due to repression by the Nazi government, officially ceased operations in 1933.
A staircase in the Bauhaus building in Dessau
Bauhaus creators and their flagship projects
Among the teaching staff were such names as Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, Marcel Breuer, Ernst Neufert- painters, designers of industrial forms and architects. Thus, colorful personalities with strong opinions clashed and collaborated there.
The most prominent example of the school's principles was the Bauhaus building in Dessau, along with the masters' houses. It was an architectural model that reflected the most important ideas and assumptions of the Bauhaus, both in terms of planning and aesthetics. While still in Weimar, Groupis designed a notable interior for the director's office, basing its design on quadrilateral geometric forms. All rooms featured furniture and lamps made according to student and faculty designs. The color palette was limited to white, gray and few accents of primary colors. The Bauhaus building complex and the modern buildings modeled on it became known as the International Style. This is because the new trend was not marked by clear national differences, which was typical of earlier periods in the history of design.
Barcelona chair designed by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich and Wassily armchair designed by Marcel Breuer
The most famous piece of Bauhaus furniture was the Wassily armchair designed by Marcel Breuer. It was based on the traditional form of a padded club chair. The designer simplified it to the maximum, until the furniture almost became a contour. Its structure was made of bent steel tubes and strips of fabric. It was probably named after Vassili Kandinsky, who greatly admired Breuer's designs.
The second seat, which is strongly popular and still recognizable today, is the Barcelona chair by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich. It has two wide cushions attached to a delicately shaped frame made of stainless steel, in the original version designed as bolster pieces.
Peter Keller's Baby Cradle and Nesting Tables by Josef Albers
Also noteworthy are Peter Keller's iconic Children's Cradle, consisting of simple shapes (triangles, rectangles and hoops) covered in primary colors, and Nesting Tables by Josef Albers. These, in turn, are tables, made of solid oak and acrylic glass with expressive colors.
Interiors of the Castle of the President of the Republic of Poland in Wisla
Polish designers and their realizations in the Bauhaus trend
Bauhaus quickly found its imitators all over the world, including Poland. The first known example of a Bauhaus-style interior is the furnishings of the presidential castle in Wisla. The furniture, made of bent pipes, evokes the rightful association with the iconic Wassily armchair. The designers of the avant-garde furnishings were Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz, Andrzej Pronaszko and Włodzimierz Padlewski.
Among the many interesting Polish realizations, residential estates designed by Helena and Szymon Sykurs or the café of the "Adria" food and entertainment complex in Warsaw, designed by Edward Seidenbeutel, also attract attention.
The interior of a residential house (Haus am Horn) in Weimar
The idea of the composition of simple solids, or the design principles of the Bauhaus
According to Gropius, development was possible only under the condition of teamwork, combining the forces of different professions. In addition to the interpenetration of art, craftsmanship and design, attention was paid to the social dimension of architecture. It was noted that the arrangement of space determines the behavior of the people using it. Space affects people individually, as well as their social life. The interiors were to be bright, spacious, functional (as were their exterior elevations, by the way) and were to take into account the needs of the residents. They were equipped with large glazing, providing unrestricted access to light and greenery.
The Bauhaus school was guided by the principle of "form resulting from function." So the creators continued the assumptions and achievements of modernism, but Bauhaus had such a strong influence on the consolidation of modernism that it began to be seen as a separate style. Designers explored the simplest forms, such as square, circle, straight lines, and experimented with basic colors. The designed furniture was characterized by simplicity and cubicity, with smooth surfaces. Ornamentation was completely abandoned in favor of expressive forms. Elements such as tops and legs of furniture took on geometric shapes.
The interior of the so-called "master houses" in Dessau
Materials - the elegance of plywood and plastic
Modern industrial techniques have made unconventional materials such as steel, glass, plywood and plastic more readily available. They also reached for wood and natural leather. All these materials were durable and, at the time, very elegant.
Gropius' premise was to create quality products that were accessible to the mass public. The simple designs of each piece of furniture facilitated its efficient production. Over time, however, these items became known as luxury goods.
