BAUHAUS

The Bauhaus, an architectural school founded by Walter Gropius in 1918, introduced a design principal that would dominate architecture and interior design for the rest of the century: form follows function.  The original Bauhaus aimed to create decent housing for the post-WWI German worker.  Emanating from the Arts and Crafts movement, Bauhaus immerged as a post war design style that favored simplicity. However, unlike Arts and Crafts, Bauhaus embraced technology, new materials and the mass production of furnishings and fixtures.

Gropius and his followers created classical forms without extraneous ornament.  They stressed the search for solutions to contemporary design problems in areas like urban planning, housing and utilitarian mass production methods. The Bauhaus school also offered courses in music, drama and particularly painting.  Thus the Bauhaus was rooted in the Arts and Crafts movement but with vision firmly set on the requirements and opportunities of its day.

The Bauhaus principles quickly caught on in the international design community, becoming strongly influential in architectural design. Bauhaus buildings, with its various workshops, studio, school and administrative offices, firmly established the principles of the International Style, an expression of the machine age as the Europeans of the 1920's wished to see it. The floor plan was designed as a series of cells, each with a specific function, becoming a direct expression, in glass, steel, and thin concrete, of the use of the building (that is, the function – hence form follows function).

The feel of a Bauhaus interior is contemporary and modern. Plain white walls with no moldings and narrow baseboards are de rigueur. Window frames should be simple.   Huge picture windows, even walls of glass, are emblematic of this style.   The floor plan should be as open as possible, and the space divided with modular furniture, low cabinets or bookcases or perhaps a partial wall made of glass bricks.  

Elements of Style:

Colors: Walls are treated as background incorporating sparse tones of black, white, brown, gray, beige, and chrome. Bursts of color are used as accent and accessories, primary colors often adding the splash of red, yellow or blue that livens the austere modern interior.