Bauhaus

Bauhaus was founded in 1919. The core idea was radical but pragmatic: abolish the artificial divide between fine art and craft. Painters, sculptors, metalworkers, architects; everyone trained together. The goal was not to fill galleries. It was to fill everyday life: furniture, housing, typography, tools.

Bauhaus broke traditional craftsmanship by the rejection of historical styles as moral failures. No Gothic revival, no neoclassical cosplay. Ornament was treated as waste—economically, materially, even ethically. “Form follows function” wasn’t a slogan; it was an accusation. Chairs were designed for sitting, buildings for living, fonts for reading. Mass production was embraced rather than feared, because it promised affordability and equality.

Bauhaus treated design as a social responsibility, not a luxury.

The school quickly attracted an large number of students and molded several prominent alumni who’d go on to have brilliant careers in design. Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky explored abstraction as a language with rules rather than mysticism. László Moholy-Nagy pushed photography, typography, and industrial materials into entirely new territory. Later, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe would steer the Bauhaus toward architectural rigor and structural clarity. These were not bohemians chasing vibes—they were systematic thinkers dissecting form, function, and perception with almost scientific zeal.

Conservatives despised the Bauhaus as cosmopolitan, leftist, and dangerously modern. The school moved from Weimar to Dessau, where it produced its most iconic buildings, before finally relocating to Berlin. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the verdict was swift. The Bauhaus was denounced as “degenerate,” accused of Bolshevism, Jewish influence, and cultural decay.

Ironically, exile saved it. Bauhaus figures scattered across Europe and the United States. Bauhaus principles quietly rebuilt postwar housing, universities, and offices across the Western world.