How Bauhaus Took
Over The World
Everything from Apple to Nike has
been influenced by the school.
Bauhaus’ influence is more enduring than ever, 100 years after its founding. Whether in the form of imitation or aversion, the institution’s vision can be seen in everything from sneakers to skateboards. Many of us may not even realize it, but principles set forth by the Bauhaus a century ago continue to define not only what is good design, but also what is sustainable and ultimately, how the future will appear.
In brief, the Bauhaus was a vibrant and progressive applied arts, design and architecture school, founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius. Active until 1933 — when Nazi repression made it almost impossible for teachers to work at the school — the Bauhaus school was spread across three locations, Weimar, Dessau and, for a final brief period, Berlin. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that the school and associated movement shaped contemporary living. Its masters, teachers and students were the minds behind some of the 20th and 21st century’s most definitive architecture and design. The Bauhaus’ second director Hannes Meyer defined the ethos that turned a school into a movement: “The needs of the people instead of the need for luxury.” Form follows function is the most commonly discussed principle of the era, and neatly frames the movement’s rejection of superfluous luxury.
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Dieter Rams and Braun
As Gropius himself once said, “If your contribution has been vital there will always be somebody to pick up where you left off, and that will be your claim to immortality.” For the Bauhaus, that somebody was undoubtedly Dieter Rams. Born in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1932, just one year before the closure of the Bauhaus school in Berlin, Rams never attended the institution but studied its principles closely.
The German industrial designer’s famously unobtrusive, “less is more” approach shaped the work of industry-leading brand Braun, where he began working in 1953 and was chief design officer from 1961 until 1995, but his ultimate legacy is creating Ten Principles for Good Design. Now central to design education curriculums around the world, the manifesto bears a striking resemblance to the founding principles of the Bauhaus school. Gary Huswit, director of 2018 documentary Rams, believes that had Rams been born in the era of the Bauhaus school, he may have turned out quite differently. “Rams doesn’t exist without the Second World War and the chaos and the scarcity and the DIY aesthetic they had early on because they had nothing and they had to improvise,” he tells HYPEBEAST.
Jony Ive and Apple
Modesty isn’t the word that first comes to mind when one thinks of the tech industry, where new products are announced at fanfare press conferences and Elon Musk is loudly tweeting his way to Mars. But when Apple launched the first iPod, it paved the way for the brand’s global dominance with its simplified functionality.
British industrial designer Jony Ive, who recently announced his departure from Apple after 27 years with the company, designed the iMac, Power Mac G4 Cube, iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook and parts of the user interface of Apple's mobile operating system iOS. Much of Ive’s professional success can be attributed to his adoption and adaptation not only of Rams’ 10 Principles for Good Design, but even of simplistic wheel-style interface designs Rams dreamt up years before Apple produced the first iPod. Ive, much like Rams, has remained notably shy throughout his career, but has been open about Rams’ influence on his own work in rare interviews. Ive, speaking to The Telegraph in 2011 about Rams’ legacy, stated that, “He remains utterly alone in producing a body of work so consistently beautiful, so right and so accessible.”
Nike
While Nike might not appear the most obvious advocate of Bauhaus principle, even the sportswear behemoth has been affected by the design school. Its reference points have often skewed towards the esoteric, leading back to the Waffle Racer, which was inspired by Bill Bowerman’s wife’s waffle maker. Even the Air Force 1 has an unusual origin story, blending hiking shoes, the first use of the Air Max technology and a name taken from the President’s plane.
The brand’s recent Nike Air Max 270 React release is a testament to both the color theory and the synergy of merging different areas of design — this is the first time the brand has combined energy-returning React foam with a 270-degree Nike Air bubble.
More interestingly, the two colorways of the trainer are a playful, but respectful, nod to the importance of the school’s focus on color theory. Bauhaus tested the boundaries of color theory during its 14 years, often hosting famed abstractionists Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee who taught students to fuse cool and warm tones championed and abstraction over figurative design. Those theories transferred from fine art to graphic design and are still prominent today.
Hollywood Homes
Consider the glamour of the 1950s Hollywood home: clean lines, sweeping concrete curves, glass walls and tubular steel. Bauhaus masters Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer defined an era of architecture with their provocative production techniques and utopian views on living. The resulting houses, perched atop the hills of LA and the dunes of Californian desert, have become backdrops for love scenes, drug deals, murders and monologues through decades of cinema history.
Modernist architect John Lautner is possibly the most prominent on screen of them all, having designed Elrod House, which featured in 1971’s Bond film Diamonds Are Forever, Sheats-Goldstein House from 1998’s The Big Lebowski and 2003’s Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, and Jack Rabbit Slim's, the 1950s-themed nightclub where John Travolta and Una Thurman held their impromptu dance-off in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 classic Pulp Fiction.
Skateboards and Swimming Pools
If you’ve ever seen Catherine Hardwicke and Stacy Peralta’s skate-culture film Lords of Dogtown, you’ll know that the ever-evolving sport owes much of its current form to the kidney-shaped swimming pools of California’s modernist homes. Most architecture historians look to the Donnell Garden, located in Sonoma, California, for the origins of this style of pool.
Designed by landscape architect Thomas Church, along with Lawrence Halprin and architect George Rockrise, the garden is a renowned modernist icon and one of the best preserved examples of its time. Completed in 1948, the garden gained popularity for its charming but unusual abstracted forms, including a kidney-shaped swimming pool. As word of the garden spread, so did its influence. Californian home-owners began having their own versions of the pool built. In the mid-1970s however, Southern California became trapped in a period of drought, and swimming pools sat empty. Around the same time, Peralta and his friends were changing skateboarding forever, and these seemingly redundant pools became scenes of evolution.
Today, skateparks around the world mirror the smooth curves of an empty swimming pool, and skate design continues to reference its cultural ties to modernism.
You may not realize just how familiar you are with the Bauhaus era of design. Consider for example the Barcelona chair. Arguably the most iconic chair in modern design history, it was created in 1929 by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and designer Lilly Reich (while the school was renowned for its refreshing approach to gender equality, Reich — wife to Mies van der Rohe — is widely uncredited for her work on this project, but according to scholar Christiane Lange the pair collaborated on many projects and exchanged artistic ideas constantly.).
While Mies van der Rohe’s work across architecture and design leaves a legacy hard to contend with, many argue that Marcel Breuer’s Wassily chair (named after Breuer’s friend the famed artist Wassily Kandinsky) is the most important chair of the period. Both chairs regularly appear on the big screen. The Wassily chair is a defining fixture of sky-scraping offices, such as the one featured in 9½ Weeks, and in the homes of well-read film characters, like we see with Charles Xavier’s apartment in X-Men First Class. The Barcelona chair also figures into the iconic scene where Jared Leto’s character meets his bloody end in American Psycho (though it is covered by a sheet).
It would be impossible however to list all pop culture references to Bauhaus. Bauhaus’ relevance today goes beyond aesthetics, but represents a commitment to Gropius’ founding principles of simplicity, accessibility, innovation and asynergy across all the arts. It seems more than timely that the school’s 100th anniversary should remind us of a movement that saw artists, photographers, designers and architects challenging our perspectives on living and documenting the reactions.
“As Gropius said, ‘If your contribution has been vital there will always be somebody to pick up where you left off, and that will be your claim to immortality.’”
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