Bauhaus & the Politics of Design

If you understand the Bauhaus, you will, pretty much, understand twentieth century art and design… and much of what followed.

The artists, designers, teachers and students who worked at the Bauhaus have a more direct and encompassing influence on the culture of the current western world than any other school or movement. A bold and sweeping claim, perhaps, and one not made lightly…

Walter Gropius wrote the Bauhaus Manifesto a century ago, setting out a mission statement for a new, more holistic, way of teaching and practicing Design. Operating ‘between the wars’, from 1919 to 1933, the Bauhaus was a German school of art and design based first in Weimar, then Dessau, and finally in Berlin.

In terms of design and manufacture, they were the culmination of what had begun in the Industrial Revolution and their core ideology upheld the principles set down by the British Victorian visionary designer, Christopher Dresser, who outlined an approach to design and making in which, “Form Follows Function,” and emphasised that things should be, “Fit for Purpose”. One of his most quoted mottoes was, “Knowledge is Power”.

Dresser is often said to be the ‘first designer’ because he was the first to set-down design principles that could be…