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Bauhaus Archives

Tubular Steel Chair

I was in Germany for a while this winter break and I spent half a day at Bauhaus Archives. It was a really interesting museum that traced the history of the Bauhaus school and it's 'radicalism' in arts and design. The conception of Bauhaus as a school that would marry arts with craftsmanship was a really powerful idea to me personally. In essence it seek to put together fine arts and applied arts as well as the socio-economic value of them.

I looked at how some of the course components of Bauhaus focused on perfecting the skills and crafts of students while getting them to think about the appropriate materials and techniques involved in the production of things they designed. In many sense, I see a lot of Bauhaus sort of ideas in IKEA - design oriented towards functionality and serving the needs of people (including low costs). Perhaps there's always a business element in the whole Bauhaus movement - in any case, we want to believe that business exists to serve the greater interests of the society.

Equally important in the Bauhaus movement was the idea of 'total arts and design', where all different forms of arts and design were explored, architecture, photography, metal works, pottery, weaving - including the combination of these different products. The potential of such a school combined with industry haven't seemed to be explored again after the closure of Bauhaus - at least not in my knowledge. I'd love to see the movement spring to life again and not just be a relic of the past where we can only reminiscent on the impact it has brought to design in the modern world.