There is no fundamental difference between an artist and a craftsman. The artist is a superior craftsman.

——Walter Gropius

As modern architects in one of the earliest advocates building industrialization road, long before the first world war, Walter Gropius began to put forward his opinion about the new buildings in succession, his thoughts and he created the Bauhaus school of thought, from the beginning of the 20th century in the architects from all over the world to produce a wide range of influence. In 1919, the Minister of the Interior of the then Weimar government officially appointed Gropius as the principal of the Archduke Saxons School of Art and the Archduke Saxons School of Arts and Craftsin Weimar, Germany. Also in the same year, he merged the two schools into the National School of Architecture and Design, known as the Bauhaus.

Founder of Bauhaus: Walter Gropius

In a narrow sense, Bauhaus, as a proper term, refers to one of the famous schools of art and design in German Modernism founded by Gropius. But in a broad sense, it is not a style, but can be called a beginning, that is, the beginning of modern design. Unlike the Arts & Crafts Movement of the late 19th century, exemplified by William Morris, or the Art Nouveau Movement of the early 20th century, centered in countries like Belgium and France, according to Gropius, it is "the establishment of a completely new system of industrial production". As for the manual production system, it was based on labor before the industrial revolution in Europe, while the subsequent large-scale industrial production mode was based on machine means. In the age of handicraft, products were all made by artisans, who did all the design with great skill. From this point of view, there was no independent designer in this age. After the industrial revolution, the social production division of labor, resulting in the separation of design and manufacturing, thus design began to gain an independent status. However, there are many disadvantages in the early industrial production, such as the lack of clear aesthetic standards and the widespread existence of shitty products. The reason for this is that technicians and employers focus on the use of new technologies and materials unilaterally, and only pay attention to the production process, quality and profit of the product, but do not pay much attention to aesthetic taste. This directly led to the first half of the 19th century, a large number of retro fashion to the European industrial products, and even the society brought a tedious and vulgar affectation. So how to deal with the contradiction between industrial mass production and tradition has become an urgent problem to be solved. On the contrary, the Arts and Crafts Movement and the Art Nouveau Movement, which were first born under this contradiction, had their historical limitations in that they ignored the progress of the industrial revolution and machine production, held a negative attitude towards the production of large industrial machines representing the new productivity, and blindly believed that the products produced by the process of industry were bound to be ugly. These limitations make it impossible to fundamentally solve the contradiction between technology and art of products produced by machines. Gropius was keenly aware of this point, so he established the "cooperation between art, industry and handicraft", and clearly proposed to create a new system to solve the contradiction between machine and handicraft through art design. Efforts are made to integrate artists and handicraft workers to improve the overall quality of industrial products. What distinguishes him from his contemporaries is that he reconciled art and industrial society with great care and personal practice, tried to find a unified way of art and technology, and asked designers to "infuse soul into dead mechanical products".

William Morris, “The Rose Fabric”, 1883

"The old society is crumbling under the impact of the machine, and a new one is taking shape." He believed that the development of architecture should move forward with The Times, and new buildings must be created in line with the aesthetics and functions of The Times. At the same time, he stressed that there must be a brand new design concept in line with the industrial era to guide the entire architectural field in Germany. European classical architecture attaches great importance to structure, complex shape and gorgeous, and the concept of highlighting artistic appeal makes it deeply reflect the influence of religious myth on secular life. However, such architecture cannot adapt to today's industrial mass production. "Something that is both artistic and scientific, that is designed and practical, and that can be mass-produced on the assembly line of a factory," Gropius said. Through exquisite form, bright contrast, powerful order, shape and color of the symmetry and unity to create their own aesthetic ideas, to achieve the unity of architectural design and handicraft, pure art and technology integration. One of the earliest examples of these ideas is Gropius and Adolf Meyer's Fagus-Werk factory at Alvard, in the Rhine Valley of Lower Saxony, which was designed between 1911 and 1913. The whole building is a frame system, the outer wall and the pillar are detached, the four corners have no corner columns, giving full play to the cantilever performance of the reinforced concrete floor slab. Instead of wrapping the columns into the walls, as in traditional architecture, a large continuous light curtain wall can be created on the exterior. The facades of the Fagus factory are made up of large glazed Windows and a metal sheet skirt wall below, which provides adequate light and partially solves the problem of interior lighting.

The exterior of the Fagus factory building designed by Gropius and Meyer.

Under the call of Gropius, a group of radical artists represented by Leoni Feininger and Johannes Eaton came to teach at the Bauhaus. The avant-garde art ideas they brought enriched and broadened the ideas and techniques of architectural design, and gradually produced a new style of arts and crafts and architecture in Bauhaus. The avant-garde art ideas they brought enriched and broadened the ideas and techniques of architectural design, and gradually produced a new style of arts and crafts and architecture in Bauhaus. In terms of design theory, three basic viewpoints are put forward: the new unification of art and technology; the purpose of design is people rather than products; and design must follow the natural and objective laws. These views have played a very positive role in the development of contemporary industrial design, making modern design step by step from idealism to realism, that is, using rational and scientific ideas to replace artistic self-expression and romanticism. Gropius points out that Renaissance artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were masters of all kinds -- painters, sculptors, even designers -- rather than modern artists, who are divided into different parts of the work. The Bauhaus also wanted to make architects into "versatile plastic artists". In addition, he wanted to absorb artists from the state of being free from society, opposed to the inheritance of historical style and style, and emphasized the principle that form follows function and obtains form from nature.  In “Where Artists and Technicians Meet”, he mentioned: "An object is determined by its nature. If its form is suitable for its purpose of operation, its essence can be clearly understood and recognized by people. A thing must be in every respect conformable to its purpose, that is to say, capable of fully fulfilling its functional purpose in practical terms." The emphasis on function by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, also a late Bauhaus schoolmaster, was also clear. "We don't think about form," he said. "We just think about the building itself. Form is not the end of our work, it's just a result." It can be seen that this kind of thought is completely consistent with the standpoint of Gropius' functionalism design theory.

Leoni Feininger, Cathedral, 1919, woodcut, 30.5 x 19 cm

Gropius' Bauhaus schoolhouse, designed in 1926, is a masterpiece of his functionalist aesthetic. The building has also been hailed as a landmark in the history of modern architectural design. It consists of classrooms, an auditorium, a dining hall, and a machine workshop. The rooms in the building face a corridor that faces the sun and is surrounded by glass. In this building, he made full use of his functionalist aesthetics. The school building is presented as a plain square. The whole architectural style is simple and clear without any unnecessary decoration. It fully displays the beauty and power of the architectural structure and the texture of the building materials, making people see the toughness of the straight lines of the new era architecture and the sense of solemnness brought by the new concept. In this way, Gropius effectively demonstrates that structure itself is a new kind of beauty, which is practical and rational and different from the traditional concept of beauty.

Bauhaus Dessau schoolhouse designed by Gropius (Photograph /Christoph Petras,2011).

Especially on the wall in the direction of the main entrance, the use of glass instead of walls exposes the complexity of the interior of the building. This practice was widely adopted in later buildings, especially in public buildings such as office buildings and nursing homes, and became the forerunner for the use of full-glass facades in multi-story and high-rise buildings. The introduction of a lot of natural light into the interior was a major aspect of the modern functional view advocated by the modernist school of architecture at that time. Because traditional European buildings have very dark interiors with little natural light, Gropius designed rooms with large Windows and balconies. In terms of the overall layout, in order to ensure lighting and ventilation, the traditional peripheral layout is replaced by the determinant layout. The building density should be controlled, and the reasonable spacing between them is decided according to the height of the building. The building not only presents a new functionalist aesthetic view, but also demonstrates that function and beauty are inseparable from modern materials and structural technology. Under the influence of this functionalist aesthetics, a series of steel tube chairs with great influence came into being in other design directions, such as the furniture workshop of Bauhaus. The "Wassily Chair" by Marcel Breuer takes advantage of the materials to make it light and elegant and simple in structure. These works opened a new way of thinking of modern furniture design, realized the idea of steel tube furniture and carried on the industrial production. These steel chairs became the epitome of modern design.

Marcel Breuer sat in the Vasily chair

In his teaching, Gropius takes manual skills as the basis, creates activities on a rational level, has a scientific understanding of materials, structure, texture and color, and creates technology in a scientific and logical working method. His philosophy is full of challenge to traditional cultural ideology and the new material such as glass, reinforced concrete under the way of the rational attitude to new technology, the fundamental purpose of design is a "person" rather than a "beautification product", then the demand for "function", should be put on the first place, followed by the aesthetic characteristics and product awareness. Through the perception of the practical process of design and creation and the insight into the process of technology, machine and production mode, the ultimate belief with metaphysical significance is established with the technique of technical language, so that people existing in the real world can feel and enjoy the material benefits brought by this belief.