bauhaus trip
In the last weeks we did a bike trip from Dresden to Dessau. In Dessau we visited the famous Bauhaus, which I had visited a couple of times, but which I hadn’t yet seen in its new colours.
The auditorium with its famous lamps, tip-up seats, mechanical window openers and the entrance doors of the auditorium:
What looks like ice cream which can fastly be gulped down is actually the door knob of one of the auditorium doors. The knobs can be immersed into the wall in order to be able to open the auditorium doors up to a 90 degree angle (see also below image). This construction, which looks like the deed of an engineer (architects are engineers in germany) is efficiently economizing space i.e. door and wall have the same length hence it virtually squeezes out all air between door and wall.
lamps, tip up seats and mechanical window openers:
The back of the stage in the auditorium is opening into the dining area:
Some hallway images:
Some Bauhaus lamps:
The Bauhaus directors Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
The director’s office:
….Bilden wir also eine neue Zunft der Handwerker ohne die klassentrennende Anmaßung, die eine hochmütige Mauer zwischen Handwerkern und Künstlern errichten wollte! Wollen, erdenken, erschaffen wir gemeinsam den neuen Bau der Zukunft, der alles in einer Gestalt sein wird: Architektur und Plastik und Malerei, der aus Millionen Händen der Handwerker einst gen Himmel steigen wird als kristallenes Sinnbild eines neuen kommenden Glaubens.
Walter Gropius, Bauhaus Manifest 1919
Despite the progressive Ansatz of the Bauhaus, there was actually a restriction for women to enter the Bauhaus, i.e. there was apparently a quota of 1 female to 3 male students. The reason for this quota was that it was feared that a too high percentage of female Bauhaus students would result in a bad reputation and a bad quality of the work done at the Bauhaus. In addition the few women who entered the Bauhaus went mostly into weaving and the fabric workshop. One of the few women in the metal workshop was Marianne Brandt:
The words on her above collage, which are unfortunately hardly readable are: “Hinter den Kulissen” (behind the scenery)
Unfortunately it seems there are still not enough comments concerning architecture which come directly from women or does anyone know of a theatre which has enough women’s rest rooms?
March 25th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Where is the documentary evidence that the Bauhaus had a restriction on the numbers of women students? I would be interested to know before quoting the fact.
March 25th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
The book practising modernity gives a fairly good overview here you can find on page 53:
which is as I understood a translation from a protocoll of a meeting of the meisterrat (master’s council) on February 2, 1920 p. 4 which you can find in the archive of the federal state of Thueringen short STAW (Staatsarchiv Weimar)
The book provides also a phrase by Walter Gropius:
“As a matter of principle we are against the schooling of female architects”
“Gegen Ausbildung von Architektinnen sprechen wir uns grundsaetzlich aus.” from a Letter of W. Gropius to Annie Weil in Vienna on February 23,1921 STAW Vol. III no 259, p.48 (see page 65 in “practising modernity”)