Bauhaus. 1919-1933. Michael SiebenbrodtЧитать онлайн книгу.

      When Hannes Meyer succeeded Walter Gropius, what was supposed to be avoided at the Bauhaus had already been extensively established: the “Bauhaus style.” Even chequered underwear advertised the Bauhaus style. How had this happened? Gropius proclaimed his design principle of nature research on the basis of the unification of art and technology in 1925. This nature analysis was, however, not carried out according to empirically scientific criteria in the Bauhaus under Gropius, as was discovered by Gropius researcher Winfried Nerdinger. The nature of an object, according to Nerdinger, was sought for in its purpose. By equating purpose and nature, the purposeful form was aestheticised without further questioning, and that initially meant geometric forms.

      Thus the products which were meant to serve the “new man” in a “new time” were subject to a vocabulary of geometric forms based on the design theories of art teachers, and Meyer initially sought to fight the “Bauhaus style” after taking office as director.[11] He put forward an analysis of social and economic questions which should eventually form the beginnings of the design process. Yet he did not succeed in fully communicating his approach, so it found its way into only a few elements of design practise. On the one hand, previously lacking engineering sciences were integrated into the curriculum, but on the other hand, the expansion of the art classes of the teachers of the Bauhaus and the “free painting classes” by Klee and Kandinsky eventually meant less of an integration and more of what seemed like the intentional exclusion of a specific field of learning. For Meyer, “art was strangling life” in the Bauhaus of his predecessor, which is why he wanted to limit the artists’ influence. The path was to lead “from formal intuition to construction science education”.[12] Meyer wanted education at the Bauhaus to be functional, constructive and collectivist, thus conditioning the school for the times ahead.

      The nine-semester education system was structured as follows: Mondays were reserved for music education, while scientific subjects were scheduled for Fridays. In the time between, work was carried out all day in the workshops, reminiscent of a factory setting. Saturdays were reserved for sports. A specialisation then followed in the architecture department, which Meyer had subdivided into construction theory and building department. The two educational goals were now called “artist” or “production or construction engineer.” Work and classes in the workshops as preparation for work in architecture thus corresponded completely to Walter Gropius’s original approach. Under Meyer’s leadership, the school’s limits were stretched when the number of students increased to two hundred, whose acceptance into the school was facilitated by the exclusion of some of the most talented people. The reason for this was the intention, according to the pedagogics of the Bauhaus to enable the “real” integration of a maximum number of people in society. In many points Meyer agreed in principle with the conceptual approach of his predecessor. Thus, for both men, building was a truly social development of “organisation of life processes” (as Gropius put it). But where Meyer’s concept was different from Gropius’s was in its affinity towards co-operative movements and the associated views going back to Swiss pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi regarding the sense in building “small circles” – family, work associations of artists and designers. For Gropius, the principle of nature research applied, while for Meyer the systematic determination of the need was the basis of design. From the basis of this concept, Meyer did not only design his architecture but also organised the “vertical brigades” within which students of different levels of education worked on one project from