A study of Bauhaus

artist
Marcel Breuer and Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe

The Bauhaus Chronology

1919 The Bauhaus, founded in Weimar 1919 by Walter Gropius.

1920 The Bauhaus experiences first public hostility. The attacks are
ideological, but flare up in the context of artistic issues.
1921 Gropius and Adolf Meyer build the Haus Sommerfeld in Berlin in an
expressionist style. It is the first project involving the aspired unity of arts in
architecture.
1922 Gropius restructures his ideas as to the aims of the Bauhaus. The
major focus is directed towards reflecting on industrial methods of
production and their consequences for design.
1923 Preparations start for the Bauhaus Exhibition, planned as a first
comprehensive public account of the schools activities. Gropius coins his
new concept in the slogan Art and technology - a new unity.
1924 The Circle of Friends of the Bauhaus is founded in order to offer
moral and practical support for the school. Under political and financial
pressure, the masters decide to close the school in April of 1925.
1925 Gropius proclaims a new program dominated by the importance of
industry and science for design. In March, the municipal council of Dessau,
on the initiative of the Lord Mayor Fritz Hesse, decides to take over the
Bauhaus as a municipal school.

Bauhaus Chronology

1926 On December 4, over 1,000 guests attend the opening of the new school building in
Dessau designed by Gropius and equipped by the Bauhaus workshops. The spectacular new
buildings - as well as the school building the houses for the Bauhaus masters and the housing
project in Dessau - achieve international fame.
1927 A department for architecture is set up under the guidance of Hannes Meyer. Klee and
Kandinsky give courses in free painting; the first purely artistic courses to be available.
1928 Gropius resigns from the Bauhaus in April to go to Berlin to work as an architect. MoholyNagy, Bayer, and Breuer also quit the school.
1929 A department for photography is created under Peterhans. Ludwig Hilberseimer is
appointed to the building department.
1930 Bauhaus wallpaper is put on the market and becomes the most successful commercial
product of the school.
1931 The elections for the municipal council of Dessau take place. The first point of their
election campaign concerns cutting financial support to the Bauhaus and the demolition of its
buildings.
1932 The school counts 14 students. Kandinsky, Albers, Hilberseimer, Reich, and Peterhans
are still on the teaching staff. A bill was passed to close the Bauhaus school. Mies van der Rohe
decides to continue the school as a private institute in Berlin.
1933 On April 11, at the start of the summer semester, the Bauhaus building undergoes a police
search and is placed under seal. 32 students are temporarily arrested. On July 20, the final
dissolution of the Bauhaus is decided upon at a staff conference. The most prominent Bauhaus
teachers emigrated over to the United States and through parts of Europe.[1]

[1] Greg Ciro Tornincasa, Inside Bauhaus.pdf

Marcel Breuer

Born in Pecs, Hungary in 21st May,1902.

Study and teaching at Bauhaus Weimar.
His most popular artwork which is Wassily chair
has been produce since 1925 until now under
Knoll International.
Influence by the abstract aesthetic, De Stijl
(Dutch art movement)
He migrate to London in 1935, working for
Isokon company

He went to US together with Gropius

teach in Harvard in 1937.
Left Harvard, opened an office in New
York. First building to be completed after
WW is Geller House on Long Island.
He won a competition to design UNESCO
headquarters in Paris in 1953.
He also designing Whitney Museum of
American Art in 1963 as experimental
monument or concrete sculpture.
Marcel Breuer dies in New York,1981.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Mies was born in Aachen, Germany in March 27th, 1886.

He moved to Berlin, where he worked for Bruno Paul,
the art nouveau architect and furniture designer.
In 1908 he began working for the architect Peter
Behrens.
He opened his own office in Berlin in 1912, and married
in 1913.
After World War I, he began studying the skyscraper and
designed two innovative steel-framed towers encased in
glass. One of them was the Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper,
designed in 1921 for a competition. It was never built,
although it drew critical praise and foreshadowed his
skyscraper designs of the late 40s and 50s.

In 1929 Mies designed one of his most famous

buildings, the German pavilion at Barcelona.
This is where the Barcelona chair being design
too.
He was director of the Bauhaus school from
1930 until its disbandment in 1933, shut down
under pressure from the new Nazi government,
then Mies moved to the United States in 1937.
In 1946, he design Farnsworth house.
1951, Lake Shore Apartment
1954, Seagram building has been built in New
York.
He died in Chicago 1969.

Design Concept

Marcel Breuer
Influenced by the De Stijl Movement in Holland,
Breuer applied the principles of objectivity and
universality in his furniture design (Sparke;
1986)
His belief of fact that furniture should be drawn
in space and in the end we shall sit on resilient
cushions of air makes Breuer become a pioneer
in revolution commercial seating design.

Tubular Steel Cantilever Chair S32

Wassily Chair

In architectural, Breuer has been

experimenting with concrete block which
applied to Whitney Museum of American
Art.
Most of his design has functional
approach, using the subject itself as
iconography and monument.

Whitney Museum
of American Art

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Design

Concept

Mies is known with usage of unconventional

material such as glass, metal and bronze in his
building design.
He is applying the Modern Movement
commitment-to lightness rather than weight and
to space rather than mass in every of his design.
His skyscraper always applied simplicity,
detailed finishing and organized interior.

Seagram building, 1954

View of the plaza, from the

lobby of the Seagram
building

Barcelona
Pavilion

Barcelona
Chair

Artwork Analysis: Marcel Breuer

Wassily chair
This chair has been design in 1925, using tubular steel
and canvas so that he could achieve lightness and
resilience and anonymity.[1] The chair design is
structural, very geometric yet modern. Airy space can be
seen in every aspect of this design, which he
continuously developed in other future design. As other
example is tubular steel chair which according to Breuer,
of the functional requirements of the object and the
necessities of modern machine production. (Naylor:
1968).
[1] Naylor, G The Bauhaus p.114

The design of Whitney Museum of

American Art for example, using concrete
that look like its sculptured out of one
complete block and using the natural tone
of those concrete as the building colour.
Once again geometrical shape is ruling in
his design, accurate structure has been
achieved successfully.

IBM complex in Florida and IBM Research

Center in France.
The flow and curve again been applied
towards this building design. He using
conventional material, but yet created
phenomenal principle of design in his
buildings which he used shape, line, and
space brilliantly.

IBM complex

Artwork Analysis: Ludwig Mies

The S shape of this chair is similar with

Breuer tubular chair but with different
approaches of style and elements. It is
rounder and curvier in shape; still keep its
own simple yet modern style. As for
Barcelona chair, he still maintained the
curvy in design, using leather as material
of luxury to meet with Barcelona Pavilion
interior.

Seagram building

the Seagram building is build in 1954 in New York, hold

the landmark status due to his refinement finishing and
using bronze as luxurious material. Located in rear
portion of the end-of-block side, Seagram building is 160
meter tall and has 39 stories. Note on this building is
cited from architectbiography.com which says that The
walls are a bronze curtain wall, and the finish throughout
was carefully designed by Mies van der Rohe. Other
says that Dark bronze-tinted glass panels held in place,
by bronze I-profiled beams attached to the mullions to
emphasize the vertical rise of the facade.

Conclusion

Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is both Germany-born
artist, equally share the same passion of furniture and architectural
design. They are from the same school which is Bauhaus, yet very
different approach in every design they produce.
For Breuer, his furniture design is more towards geometrical shape
yet maintain the lightness of product using unconventional material
weight itself such as tubular steel, canvas and cut-out plywood.
Mies are more towards using glass and steel to add up 20th century
environment into his design. Same goes with simplicity and
geometrical position of building location, interior, and design
concept. Although his building is very detailed in finishing and
geometrically done, his armchair or furniture design is smoother in
shape, elegant, and he does maintain the simplicity aspect of
design.
Breuer and Mies have succeeded in applying fine art in architecture
design to create new buildings which has been the main objective in
Bauhaus.