BAUHAUS AND YOUR HOUSE

The Museum of Modern Art in New York is hosting a retrospective on the
Bauhaus …
Known as ‘House of Building’ or ‘Building School’, the Bauhaus was a school in Germany, which operated from 1919 until 1933, when it was shut down by the Nazis.

Founded by architect Walter Gropius, the school’s main objectives was to unify art, craft and technology. ‘Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual nor a
material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary
for everyone in a civilized society’, said Gropius.
Classes were offered in various “departments”, and Gropius insisted on cross-pollination between each. An architect would learn from painting, a metalworker was required to learn color theory, a weaver worked with a furniture-maker. The school adopted new industrial materials, experimented with production
techniques for everything from imagery to housewares to homes themselves and
pushed the flexibility of prefabrication.

The Bauhaus school is responsible for, among other things, tubular steel chairs,
industry-inspired lighting, muted-toned wallpaper, as well as the now distinctive Bauhaus typography. Artists educated at the Bauhaus became luminaries in
architecture, painting, interior design, typography, sculpture, photography,
weaving, printmaking, color theory and education.

The art and architecture of the Bauhaus has greatly influenced the cultural fabric of Western Europe, the United States, Canada and Israel. Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer went to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, which in turn produced architects such as Philip Johnson, I.M. Pei, Lawrence Helping and Paul Rudolph. Mies van der Rohe emigrated to Chicago. These architects went on to design some of the most iconic skyscrapers and distinctive modern houses in North America.

EVENTS

Here are some local architecture exhibits of interest:

Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity

This survey is MoMA’s first major exhibition since 1938 on the subject of this famous and influential school of avant-garde art. Founded in 1919 and shut down by the Nazis in 1933, the Bauhaus brought together artists, architects, and designers in an extraordinary conversation about the nature of art in the age of technology. Aiming to rethink the very form of modern life, the Bauhaus became the site of a dazzling array of experiments in the visual arts that have profoundly shaped our visual world today. The exhibition gathers over four hundred works that reflect the broad range of the school’s productions, including industrial design, furniture, architecture, graphics, photography, textiles, ceramics, theater design, painting, and sculpture, many of which have never before been exhibited in the United States.

Now to January 25, 2010

The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street New York, NY 10019, The Joan and Preston Robert Tisch Exhibition Gallery, sixth floor

What We Learned: The Yale Las Vegas Studio and the Work of Venturi Scott Brown & Associates

Two concurrent exhibitions showcasing the groundbreaking Las Vegas Studio of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown as well as the work of their firm will be presented by the Yale School of Architecture at the gallery of Paul Rudolph Hall. The exhibitions offer complementary perspectives on the legendary studio taught at Yale in 1969 and its subsequent impact on the teaching, research, and design work of Venturi and Scott Brown, two of America’s most prominent architects.

Now to February 05, 2010 at the Yale School of Architecture, 180 York Street, New Haven , CT

…’ a housebuilder is the cause of a house; incidentally, a fluteplayer may be so.” – Aristotle, Physics, Book II, Part 5

A bientot,
Karin

Tags: architect, Architecture, Bauhaus, color theory, Connecticut, cross-pollination, education, Harvard Graduate School of Design, I.M. Pei, industrial materials, interior design, Lawrence Helping, Mies van der Rohe, Museum of Modern Art, New Haven, New Haven Architecture, New York City, painting, Paul Rudolph, Philip Johnosn, photography, printmaking, Robert Venturi, sculpture, skyscrapers, The Yale Las Vegas Studio, typography, Venturi Scott Brown & Associates, visual arts, Walter Gropius, weaving, Workshops for Modernity