I thought I totally hated Bauhaus, probably mistaking it for brutalism, and now I just realized I do have, in my living room, the chrome Bauhaus chairs shown in TFA!
And I think Le Corbusier (he was swiss french, not german that said)'s famous "LC4" lounge chair is considered Bauhaus too (it's Bauhaus era for sure).
I still don't like Bauhaus buildings that said but thanks HN for making me realize that there are a few furnitures I own and love that are actually Bauhaus!
It's incredible how modern these furnitures from the 1920s do actually still look even today.
Le Corbusier is rightly famous for his architecture, but the person who arguably deserves more mention here is Charlotte Perriand [1]. She designed the LC4 together with Pierre Jeanneret, Le Corbusier's cousin, who was also a great designer. But Le Corbusier took credit for this chair and other furniture that she designed, and she never achieved anywhere near the fame of Le Corbusier during her lifetime. Fortunately, this is changing.
When done right, Bauhaus can look pretty good. However, living in Germany, I've come to mostly dislike it. The 70's style Bauhaus buildings are everywhere here, they are ugly, clumpy, and break with the medieval/Jugendstil facades in the city centers. It does not help that thet often were built with cheap materials and are hard to maintain bacaude of that. Unfortunately, they often now are under Monument protection so also can' be demolished.
We don't really have Bauhaus influenced buildings in Germany there are only like 4 buildings still standing besides the campus in Dessau. Most of the architects went to Israel and build Tel Aviv which is the city with the most influence from Bauhaus architecture. The brutalist buildings in the 60s and 70s in Germany are not Bauhaus.
Thanks for this reply! I did not know this fact and the new info made me go down the rabbit hole of Brutalism vs Bauhaus. Very much appreciated. Comments like this make me love HN!
While not really specifically about Bauhaus but covering the later movements it influenced up until the present, Gary Hustwit films in his "Design Trilogy" (Objectified, Helvetica, Urbanized) are a brilliant study into the influence of various design movements and designers over the last century. Very much recommend them:
Looking forward to seeing the renovated Bauhaus museum in Berlin. I went there a few times before they closed for renovation. Amazing collection. Not the grandest or most impressive museum in Berlin but nice in its own right. Also Mies van der Rohe's Neue National Galery just reopened. Which is a fine bit of Bauhaus architecture. Need to find some time to visit that. Getting a visiting slot with all the Covid restrictions is a bit of a challenge right now.
if that's Your thing, the Bauhaus Museum in Weimar has been recently renovated (opened about 2y ago). Not sure how it compares to the one in Berlin, but I found it to be quite well done (specially the last floor, where they allow themselves to experiment a bit). It stands in contrast to the monstrous nazi gathering space that's just across the street. Also, the campus at Dessau is constantly being renovated as well (though not sure how COVID impacted this one, since it's kinda spread around several smaller buildings).
Well, Bauhaus is definitely not to my taste, stylistically.
To me (and please keep in mind this is of course entirely subjective) design that just screams 'we have too much money and time to think about this design' is a bit repugnant and cold and de-constructive.
I really enjoy the warmth and pragmatism of medieval architectures, for example.
"simple" has to imply neither "primitive" nor "bad workmanship". Bauhaus takes this principle, and expresses it in architectural and industrial design.
This is a timeless truth, that can be seen in everything humans create, from art, architecture, writing, up to and including software.
"Why did the Nazis feel so threatened by the Bauhaus? Why were they so scared of an art school that made modernist furniture and kitchenware? Because it represented a world view which was the complete opposite of National Socialism.
Nazism was nostalgic and nationalistic. The Bauhaus was cosmopolitan and avant-garde. Its international ethos made a mockery of Hitler’s racist fantasies. In a way, the persecution of the Bauhaus by the Nazis was a (very) backhanded compliment. They hated everything it stood for, but they were fearful of its power."
Related, the same accusations of “cosmopolitanism” (this was the exact word accusers used) were made against Romanian architects who were still trying something modern between 1948-1950 (when the local communists had just established their power) and 1953-1954, i.e. immediately after Stalin’s death. Those few years brought an interesting series of Stalinism-inspired public housing and a few major buildings, like “Casa Scânteii” [1]
Constructivism shares a lot with Bauhaus, but for some reason constructivist buildinga usually look OK and in some sense are the last generation of modern (but not post-modern) architecture
It's an interesting case of the limits of a design language, where it works great for furniture and scales horribly to buildings. Brutalism is a different language, there are valid criticisms of both Bauhaus and modernism in general that are not merely nostalgic or fascist, unless one thinks someone like Christopher Alexander is some kind of crypto-nazi, (and oddly by extension, Prince Charles but royals are probably not a good example).
The minimalist and arguably crude geometry of Bauhaus looks a lot like a revolt and a reaction against nature and divinity, which makes sense when Europe had recently come out of a romantic and nostalgic period of revivals and suffocating sentimentality. Personally, I think there are deeper and more meaningful criticisms of modernism(s) than what often reduces to mere anti-cosmopolitanism. To me, the intrinsic humanism in Bauhaus buildings begins with a definition of human that is in opposition to wildness, nature, and is explicitly secular, if not atheistic, which is understandable given what was going on at the time, but Bauhaus is one of those things where what you do in opposition isn't what you do as the incumbent. Bauhaus and modernisms are a reaction and a critique, instead of say, an expression of awe, humility, generosity, or other higher virtues. When I read about this stuff back in the 90s, my impression was modernism and Bauhaus were not so much cosmopolitan novelties, but assertions of humanity, both in opposition to nature but also to european clericalism, which has some pretty deep psycho-spiritual stuff wrapped up in it, so I can see why people who hear criticisms of Bauhaus start picking around the edges to see if they can unravel underlying anti-semitic urges. The need to assert humanity begins with a presumption of disadvantage, which in many cases was true and necessary, but also not. (An irony being that it was Italian fascism and its similar ultra modern futurist design that the german fascist/national-socialists adopted for their propaganda.)
The reason I like Bauhaus is because I think it encodes a valiance, resiliance, humility, humanism, generosity, accessability, and a peculiar universality of being not-of its environment, which is arguably a beautiful echo of the Jewish experience in Europe. Criticism of Bauhaus and modernisms are difficult to fully isolate and extricate from that experience, but that shouldn't be a criteria for talking about it, and it's also a proxy for discourse about where western history comes from. In the background, I'm working on something now about how the world owes our appreciation of J.S. Bach as a pillar of the western cannon to Felix Mendelssohn's revival of his work as the effect of his conversion from judaism to christianity, likely as a means to assimilate, but it was his sadness and self denial from being born an outsider that gave the world one of the most beautiful pillars of our civilization in the form of the works of Bach. Just as we can't talk about about Bauhaus without acknowledging the experience of Jews in Europe, our notions of a western "white" "civilized" "us," stand on pillars made explicitly by people who identified as another "us," and "not-us," which I think is proof we are not "us" without "them." By definition, they were us, and necessarily, we are them. Sure, nice furniture and ugly buildings, but that's not the point. Architecture is a rich discourse about meaning and experience, and anyway, it's just a pleasure to think about.
Not to answer for somebody else, but a lot of the Bauhaus design was very modern and minimalist. Despite this it aimed to be more functional than what existed before (queue the Bauhaus kitchen). After all they had to defend their "modernist nonsense" back then for sure — that meant only looking modern didn't cut it.
Many designers and architects that copied the Bauhaus style didn't copy the Bauhaus functionality, thus creating something that looks modern, but is actually worse in terms of functionality than what existed before. One can't really blame the Bauhaus for this tho.
Style will always be easier to copy than style + functionality
That’s not Bauhaus fault. It happened all the time when artists and builders focused on style and completely forgot about function, but only really good artifacts usually survive.
My favorite example is Vasa, the Swedish warship that sunk at the start of her maiden voyage. The ship was gorgeous, but it could not sail.
The Bauhaus kind of discourages things that are easy to copy in functionality though.
It's easy(In large quantities) to make an empty box with a tiny class D PCB in it, and add some LED fake vacuum tubes and digital correction for your crappy speaker.
Try to make a real tube amp and you might need actual quality parts and design to sound as good.
You might be able to make something better than the fake version, but just matching the fake will probably cost more.
When form and function are the same, it's almost like a closed form equation. There's not as many knobs to turn, so you're relying on the ones you have to be high quality.
You can't have much fault tolerance in a system that believes making stuff that still works when faulty is a type of lying.
> The Bauhaus kind of discourages things that are easy to copy in functionality though
Why do you think so? The whole idea of this school was to make things scalable while preserving aesthetics. It’s not yet IKEA, but it is already not Jugendstil.
I think there is a chance you forgot to perceive the Bauhaus within it's historical context. The Bauhaus kitchen I mentioned absolutly was an improvement in terms of both raw usability and technological quality compared to the typical German kitchen that was common back in that day.
Some of that was of course achieved on the back of more modern kitchen devices and electricity, but most of it was just thinking about where to put things, how they are interacted with in daily use and giving it an aesthetically pleasing form. The stated goal of e.g. that kitchen was to give the modern housewife more time by reducing unnecessary movements by clever design.
This is why I don't really get the tube amp example. Tube amps (as nearly all other electrical devices have been buily more rugged and over engineered back in the day. The dynamic that lead to the degraded build quality has been mostly societal and systemic (customers not as willing/able to pay money for quality, mamifacturers being more interested in increasing shareholder value by replacing a high quality potentiometer with a cheap membrane button while calling it progress). This is not progress it is the 20th century equivalent of a babylonian merchant selling low quality grain in 1750 BC [0] or in other words: somebody tries to get rich by selling low quality stuff. The design follows the market here — most designers I know would die for a company that finally let's them design good stuff.
Bauhaus designs were certainly not low quality stuff however. A Bauhaus stool certainly had different design parameters than e.g. a Jugendstil one, some of which also made it cheaper to manufacture, but cheaping out was not the goal here. It was to make design more accessible and more usable.
A bass player today can make the legit choice that they want to get the best sound at the needed volume for the lightest possible weight. A quality tube bass amp weighs upwards 20 kg — without a speaker cabinet. Getting yourself a good class D amp is not a bad choice in today's time and age. Of course you could also compare a top of line tube amp to a cheap knockoff class D amp operated with an even cheaper switch mode PSU, but that would be like going from 200€ cheap laptop to an M1 macbook pro and declaring all non-apple laptops shit. There are really really good class D amps out there both in terms of sound and function.
That's definitely true, in it's historical context things are a lot different, what I'd consider good mass production design might not have even been possible back then.
The "Truth to materials" idea makes a lot more sense considering that cheap faux veneers and the like used to just straight up fall apart, and the "No extra ornamentation" idea makes sense when you don't have a CNC machine.
Still, it is odd that the modern minimalist movement is so similar even though the economics and engineering has changed. It seems much more philosophical than pragmatic in it's current iteration .
The best of modern design makes "Cheap trash" into a feature rather than a bug.
A cheap membrane button might wear out, and a Bauhaus engineer will think "What's wrong with a good old volume knob? I'll pay $3 for a pot that isn't scratchy".
In a more reasonable modern design you'd have something like a rotary encoder or a capacitive touchscreen, and DSP volume control , in the same chip that was also handling your real-time speaker correction and modeling, WiFi control, etc.
Obviously, there's going to be an all analog tube amp that sounds as good or better than your $2 speaker and mini supercomputer driving it to pretend it's not crappy.
But you probably won't hear the difference unless you're an elite player in a great room, so it's only relevant to the top enthusiasts.
Bauhaus encourages people to fix problems by simplifying, modern design says "I bet I can make a capacitive encoder only a little more expensive than a good pot if I make ten million of them and use some more DSP to fix the shitty signal, and in the process I'll get these 8 new features for free"
Tubular steel, for one. Tubular steel is an abomination, especially in chairs.
Modern chairs are typically terribly uncomfortable (the Eames lounge chair being one exception). This may speak to sibling's point regarding appropriation of style but with poor execution.
A nice Windsor with wedged mortise-and-tenon construction is preferable. A good Windsor conveys a sense of movement, as though it's about to stand up and walk away; those lines lead to a particularly comfortable chair. Windsors will also last 300+ years....
They really promoted "Truth to materials", and then went even farther and did designs that can only be done with very strong materials. That's a great way to make everything heavy, bulky, expensive, and resource intensive.
A real modern high tech design gets it's reliability from the design. You can built it in a sloppy way with crap parts and it will work and look fine.
Visually Bauhaus is fairly unforgiving. Dirt or scratches or just stuff that doesn't match the style really stands out in a room full of minimalist things, and even more so in modern minimalist design, and that's considered a feature rather than a bug.
It kind of sneaks in some kind of subtle Edwardian "Show off your wealth by not doing anything only poor people need" stuff in the back door.
On the opposite end is modern farmhouse, which is incredibly forgiving,because there's so many textured decorative elements.
Rustic has a slight issue because it can also hide things you are looking for, and if you let it get to be a mess it won't "tell" you like Bauhaus will, it just feels nasty and oppressive without as being obvious why, but it has a lot of flexibility.
Now we have things like resin infused wood and FEA, all kinds of new paints and coatings, and real automation, and it's no longer a guarantee that something fake will fall apart.
Lots of things are basically cardboard with a thin layer of wood, and they use less material, are very light, and hold up surprisingly well.... except for the fact we throw them away anyway because we hate "cheap trash".
Even the way we judge food could be seen as a Bauhaus-ism. The whole paleo/keto nonsense and the idea that people should eat vast quantities of meat all day fits right in with a mindset of substance and simplicity and truth to materials. But it doesn't appear to work as well as they claim. It makes sense as a reaction to some specific modern processed things, but it doesn't seem to be backed up by studies.
Apple is kind of the ultimate modern reimagining of the Bauhaus. They're all about the tech that isn't there.
As I see it an iPhone isn't meant to do anything at any time and get you out of any jam like a tricorder.
I think it's meant to feel more like an appliance with a somewhat defined set of uses, and you're supposed to adapt to that, and that's part of the selling point, you're supposed to enjoy being the kind of person that can afford a closed ecosystem, and who is smart and capable and doesn't need a device to be compatible with everything.
That's basically the same as a chair that can only work with really strong tubular steel, it's a limitation used to showcase the capabilities of something else(you).
Bauhaus also ate a lot of other movements and really killed off a lot of diversity. Probably because it looks it's best without any other styles nearby.
> Rustic has a slight issue because it can also hide things you are looking for, and if you let it get to be a mess it won't "tell" you like Bauhaus will, it just feels nasty and oppressive without as being obvious why, but it has a lot of flexibility.
That's one of the reasons I like minimalism: it makes it blatant when a room is overloaded instead of being a well-decorated environment where setting something down is equivalent to throwing it in the trash (except you can re-discover it six months later).
It's interesting that it almost works like the digital cliff.
In average to crappy conditions, minimalism will be more effort and work to make sure everything is put away and straightened, much like analog video being lower quality.
Non minimalist places can function perfectly well with a moderate amount of clutter, and it's easier to work in, because things will be findable just by scanning your environment, right up until you suddenly find you can't tell the difference between the table and the dumpster.
With tech, that theoretically doesn't happen, because digital should give a "Link quality low" alert before things actually get too bad, but with your living space, it's all on you to notice things are getting bad.
It's probably about time for a more detailed theory of design that takes into account what specifically you are trying to minimize or maximize, the usual discussions don't distinguish between complexity, item count, physical volume, cost, reliability, and attention demand.
Increasing complexity can often get rid of all the rest of them(As in going all paperless), and decorations are low attention demand.
Whereas the single function analog stuff that some hardcore minimalism enthusiasts like(Like film cameras and dead tree tax papers), often have high space requirements and can easily be weapons of mass cluttering if not carefully put away.
Nice. Hot damn, I love coherent strong opinions well expressed. Especially about design, philosophy, and other human experience stuff that really matters.
Tying bauhuas to keto is wonderful. As someone who just resumed the troglodiet (sic), that's a notion I must chew on. (Ha.)
Shout out to u/atoav and u/jason-phillips too. Thanks, y'all made my day.
Well, it is true that when I see someone bashing Bauhaus style without elaborating on why, I start looking through their comment history for far-right dogwhistles.
I'm not a fan of the Bauhaus's modern influence, but... yeah it's a bit uncomfortable when you find yourself hating the same thing that literal Nazis hated, even if you believe your reasons are not the same.
Bauhaus was a mistake. An evolutionary tail that should have ended.
We lost all sense of beauty and craftsmanship. The same emptiness everywhere.
I’d rather have a Louis XIV chair mass produced for everyone.
Have you read Tom Wolfe's "From Bauhaus to Our House"? It is a great critique of Bauhaus architecture. I really love Bauhaus buildings when they stand in contrast to other styles, but when you have a skyline dominated by lesser Bauhaus knockoffs, it is pretty boring and bleak.
No, but will read.
I guess what we need is contrast, from glass cubes.
Maybe bauhaus is like cactus. It makes sense in a garden. But a whole garden of them, feels despondent.
The article contains exactly two photos of buildings (and one small part of a building).
If, for the sake of argument, disliking Bauhaus wasn't basically equivalent to Nazism, as the article implies, would you want to live or work in a neighborhood of buildings like those?
The endless influence of Bauhaus is mostly a lack of aesthetic investment in products or structures. Bauhaus created a design framework for a global market society ultimately lacking any distinct identity or culture. Minimalism is the aesthetic of our time, conforming to the cost cutting ideals of mass production over humanist sentiment.
And I just discovered that the amazing "Barcelona" chair is considered a Bauhaus item: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona_chair
And I think Le Corbusier (he was swiss french, not german that said)'s famous "LC4" lounge chair is considered Bauhaus too (it's Bauhaus era for sure).
I still don't like Bauhaus buildings that said but thanks HN for making me realize that there are a few furnitures I own and love that are actually Bauhaus!
It's incredible how modern these furnitures from the 1920s do actually still look even today.