d68 DESIGN HISTORY / BAUHAUS
currently a visiting professor of design and kitchen culture at Bucks New University. “This is an objective almost everyone involved in product and interior design pursues. While sometimes in tension with traditions of handmaking, its philosophy is both alive and necessary.”
It was this ‘stripping away of detail’, a philosophy that shaped the Bauhaus school its entire life under all three directors that brought it into conflict with Nazi thinking on design. Architectural style was used by the Nazis to deliver and enforce their ideology. Formal elements like flat roofs, horizontal extension, uniformity, and the lack of decor created ‘an impression of simplicity, uniformity, monumentality, solidity and eternity,’ which is how the Nazi Party wanted to appear.
Clearly the writing was on the wall for the future of the Bauhaus and in 1933, the school was closed by its own leadership under pressure from the Nazi regime, having been painted as a centre of communist intellectualism. Mies van der Rohe emigrated to the United States where he accepted the position to head the architectural school at the Illinois Institute of Technology, in Chicago.
His broader vision for the Bauhaus movement was certainly bold. He sought to establish a new architectural style that could represent modern times just as Classical and Gothic did for their own eras. He created a new
20th Century architectural style, stated with extreme clarity and simplicity. His mature buildings made use of modern materials such as industrial steel and plate glass to define interior spaces. Mies van der Rohe’s legacy, and that of the Bauhaus, can be seen in many of the skyscrapers on the skylines of Chicago and New York.
“The Bauhaus legacy is to liberate design from historic rules and conventions,” says Grey. “We see the effect in simplified modern kitchens. In terms of kitchen architecture, the development of curtain wall glazing systems made for rooms full of light – a revelation to all of us who do not want to live in dark buildings.
“In particular though, Bauhaus ideas have shaped the objects we use in the kitchen. The everyday tools of cooking and eating – cutlery, ceramics, pots and pans – were all restyled by 20th Century designers, especially Bauhaus-influenced names from Scandinavia such as Arne Jacobsen.”
While studying at London’s Central School of Art and Design, a young Terence Conran embraced the principles of the Bauhaus. For Conran, as for Bauhaus members such as designer Josef Albers, weaver Anni Albers and artists Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, design was for all, rather than a privileged few. Conran recognised the importance of
beautiful, functional and accessible products, which have been integral to his businesses ever since. And there is every chance that The Conran Shop would not exist if it had not been for the Bauhaus – at least, certainly not as we know it. The Bauhaus school’s belief in the harmony of form and function, the notion that design should be socially beneficial and accessible to all, exerted a tremendous influence on him when he founded the shop, and have continued to define it ever since.
And so the Bauhaus wheel turns full circle. 100 years since its formation, the Conran Shop marks the Bauhaus centenary presenting its SS19 collection, a unique group of products from designers who are continuing the Bauhaus legacy. Spread across three themes – New Minimalism, Sobremesa, and Tropical Modernism – The Conran Shop’s new-season collection of furniture, lighting, textiles and technology draws upon designers in whom the legacy of Bauhaus lives on, with new pieces by the likes of Matthew Hilton, Samuel Wilkinson and Daniel Schofield, alongside iconic designs from some of the biggest names in modernism.
The Bauhaus has been shaping architecture and interior design thinking for a century and its core belief of form following function is as relevant in 2019 as it was in 1919. And as it probably will be in 2119. Remember, you read it here first! d
Left: Bauhaus ideas have shaped the objects we use in the kitchen says Johnny Grey, such as the pictured Grid tableware from South African ceramics studio Wonki Ware for The Conran Shop Right: The Bauhaus school closed in 1919
MAR 2015
MAY 2019
designer kitchen & bathroom
designerkbmag.co.uk
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