The Bauhaus was an inter-disciplinary school for architecture, design, visual and performing arts that existed in Germany only between 1919 and 1933 when the Nazis shut it down. However, the Bauhaus movement still had a huge influence on modern design. Even if you don’t know it, you probably are familiar some of the Bauhaus products, its iconic building, or some of the people who taught there, including Kandinsky and Paul Klee.
The goal of the school was to form a universal designer that would be able to work in any number of design fields: architecture, handcrafts, graphic design or industry. It was a time when “new art forms were developing so quickly, art and craft were still valued on a moral and philosophical rather than just a commercial level” and there was a real optimism about the positive impact good design could make on people's life.
Take Bauhaus furniture for example. Bauhaus furniture (almost always designed by famous architects such as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe) is a good example of mid century modern furniture. The form is made of clean straight lines but still provides the consumer with the comfort of traditional furniture. It manages to be affordable while not making compromises on style.
Bauhaus furniture designers were intrigued by the use of metal. The inspiration for moving away from traditional furniture material? Metal and tubular steel was light, cheap, and less bulky and more hygienic than the traditional upholstered furniture. The idea behind this “new aesthetics was to build cheap beautiful homes, where the cool and durable materials of the furniture would create a new type of beauty.” The Bauhaus furniture movement provided a more functional and sustainable type of beauty than the traditional style of furniture that the world had settled for. The Bauhaus is one of the best examples of how good design can have a positive impact on the consumer. Yes, traditional furniture can be beautiful, but the modern furniture created during the Bauhaus movement gives the consumer the option of beauty AND usefulness (something that few designs had accomplished at the time).
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