How were the architecture from the Bauhaus movement different from the architecture before the Bauhaus movement?: 3D Gallery

Bauhaus origin

During the Weimar Period, architecture Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus School for Architecture located in the city of Weimar. The school and movement influenced many aspects of architecture in Germany since then. The Bauhaus movement lasted from 1919-1933 before the Nazis shut it down. The Bauhaus movement mainly brought modernism into Germany's architecture and in this gallery, comparisons between architecture before and after the bauhaus movement would be made to show how the Bauhaus movement changed architecture in Germany.

Before Bauhaus(Gothic style)

This is an example of a different style of architecture built before the Bauhaus movement. Before the Bauhaus movement, buildings in Germany copied gothic features. This piece of architecture is called the Cologne Cathedral and it was built in the 1920s. Buildings in Germany before the Bauhaus movement that copied gothic features were usually tall, had a pointed arch and had large emphasis on the decorative style. Those gothic buildings also have many gargoyle inside their buildings. They're little carvings of monstrous, decorative little creatures that are usually perched on the side and roofs of buildings. They're the distinct style of most buildings before the Bauhaus movement.

Bauhaus changes

The Bauhaus movement changed challenged many features of the traditional buildings from before, like the gothic style buildings. The Bauhaus movement taught artists and architects to bring in a modern aspect into architecture. One of the main aims of the Bauhaus school was to teach students to reconcile art styles with industrial mass production. They wanted to experiment with new styles, shapes, forms, even font. Most Bauhaus work were not meant to be pieces of art to be looked at in museums, but they were meant to be functional everyday items. Whereas the architecture before were created heavily based on appearance and decoration instead of functionality.

Fagus factory

One of the earliest architecture work created from the Bauhaus movement is the Fagus Factory. As seen from this picture, one of the main features that emerged out from the Bauhaus movement into architecture was modernism. Unlike the gothic style architecture, the Bauhaus architectures did not include any ornaments or decoration, unlike the gothic style architecture, which included decorations like carvings of gargoyles in then and many other decorative carvings in buildings. However, in the new pieces of architectures, Bauhaus architectures kept their designs simple and without much decoration. As seen in this picture, the Fagus Factory design is simple, with new materials like glass being largely used and no decorations to be seen as compared to the gothic style architectures before.

Difference in purpose

Unlike previous architectures like the gothic style architectures that were previously built all around Germany, the new Bauhaus style architecture were designed based on social, artistic, practical features. As seen in previous architectures, like the gothic style architectures, those pieces of architectures were heavily based around ornaments and decorations to make the architectures look as beautiful and decorative as possible. However, with the Bauhaus style architecture, things were different. Bauhaus architectures designed buildings to be sustainable, sensible, simple. Bauhaus movement teaches architects "truth to material", meaning that materials should be used in their most "honest" and appropriate form. For example, supportive things like steel should be shown off for other people to see and not hidden unlike the old style of architecture which focused more on decoration. Here is a video of some famous examples of Bauhaus style architectures, in the video it can be seen that materials like steel are presentable in the architecture instead of being hidden.

Space over mass

Also, one of the most obvious differences between the previous architecture and the Bauhaus architecture was that the Bauhaus movement produced architecture that used more space than mass. As seen in the drawing plan for one of the Bauhaus buildings, the piece of architecture takes up a lot of space rather than mass. As observed from the previous picture of the gothic style architecture, the old style of architecture took up a smaller amount of space rather than mass. Also, the old style of architecture was a lot more taller and narrower whereas the Bauhaus style architectures are shorter and wider and take up a lot more space. They also have an open floor plan as seen in the drawing plan above.

Focus on science and practicality

In this picture, it's actually a cartoon drawing of two tables that were designed by architects from different times. On the left, it's a cartoon drawing of an ornament designed from Art Nouveau and on the right, it's a cartoon drawing of Josef Albers who was a Bauhaus designer. Art Nouveau is more decorative and it was designed based on traditional craft skills and the materials used to make the table is more expensive. The table on the right is more simplistic yet thoughtful and it's more functional and the material used to build that table is relatively cheap. One of the most obvious difference between the previous architecture and Bauhaus architecture has to be the Bauhaus architecture's focus of science and practicality. Whereas the old architecture focused a lot more on beauty and fine art that went into architecture. The old architecture had a huge focus of fine art and craft like the sculptures and paintings that went into the architecture. However, the Bauhaus movement produced architecture that focused largely on the intellectual and theoretical pursuits. That differed a lot from the old architecture as they mainly focused on the fine art, unlike the new Bauhaus architecture.

New way of building architecture

It is obvious that the Bauhaus movement brought a lot of new things to the world of architecture in Germany and it differed a lot from the previous way of buildings things. One of the new things that the Bauhaus movement brought into Germany was the use of new material and techniques. One of the many new materials that the Bauhaus brought into architecture was the use of tubular steel. Tubular steel was a material that was never used in previous architecture and architects didn't even think it was suitable for building furniture. A student of Bauhaus used tubular steel in his designing of a chair and these days, the chair he created is now a classic design of a chair. The picture above is a picture of the chair designer Marcel Breuer created.

Different thinking used while building architecture

The Bauhaus movement also did something different from the traditional way of thinking, which is putting the economic way of thinking into building architecture. Bauhaus designers tried to think of ways to use the cheaper materials and techniques to build things to lower the cost of making things. Their economic way of thinking also explains the simplicity and plain design of architecture produced. Before Bauhaus, architects focused on making products as beautiful and decorative as possible, which usually used more expensive materials and techniques.

Conclusion

The Bauhaus movement differed a lot from the previous architecture style. It differed in many ways like simplicity, functionality of architectures. Bauhaus movement brought modernism into German architecture and simplicity, unlike the traditional way of building architecture.

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How were the architecture from the Bauhaus movement different from the architecture before the Bauhaus movement?