II Reading

Exercise 6. Read and translate:

Notes:

Pay attention to pronunciation:

Weimar; Dessau; Walter Gropius ; Hannes Meyer; Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Marcel Breuer ;

Gunta Stölz; Anni Albers; Bayer; Moholy-Nagy; Tschichold.

Text A The Bauhaus

Diagram for the structure of teaching at the Bauhaus

Statliches Bauhaus known simply as Bauhaus was a school for experiments and education of German architecture, industrial art and handicraft operating from 1919 to 1933. The German term Bauhaus, literally "house of construction" stood for "School of Building". The school existed in three German cities (Weimar from 1919 to 1925, Dessau from 1925 to 1932 and Berlin from 1932 to 1933), under three different architect-directors: Walter Gropius from 1919 to 1928, Hannes Meyer from 1928 to 1930 and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930 until 1933.

The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 by an architect named Walter Gropius. He came from the Werkbund movement which sought to integrate art and economics, and to add an element of engineering to art. The Werkbund movement was unable to achieve this integration, but the founding of the Bauhaus saw the solution that had previously been overlooked. The Bauhaus was founded by the combining of the Weimar Art Academy, and the Weimar Arts and Crafts School. Students at this new school were trained by both an artist and a master craftsman, realizing the desires of Gropius to make modern artists familiar with science and economics, that began to unite creative imagination with a practical knowledge of craftsmanship, and thus to develop a new sense of functional design.

The school had three aims at its inception that stayed basically the same throughout the life of the Bauhaus even though the direction of the school changed significantly and repeatedly. The first aim of the school was to rescue all of the arts from the isolation in which each found itself, to encourage the individual artisans and craftsmen to work cooperatively and combine all of their skills. Secondly, the school set out to elevate the status of crafts, chairs, lamps, teapots, etc., to the same level enjoyed by fine arts, painting, sculpting, etc. The third purpose was to maintain contact with the leaders of industry and craft in an attempt to eventually gain independence from government support by selling designs to industry. With these at its basis the Bauhaus began and influenced our lives immensely in ways that most people probably take for granted.

Tubular chair by Marcel Breuer

The greatest practical achievements at the Bauhaus were probably in interior, product, and graphic design. For example, a designer Marcel Breuer created many furniture designs at the Bauhaus that have become classics, including the first tubular-steel chair. Unlike heavily upholstered furniture, his simple, machine-made chairs were "airy, penetrable," and easy to move. Gunta Stölz and Anni Albers were major innovators in the area of textile design at the school's weaving workshop. In ceramic and metal design, a new vocabulary of simple, functional shapes was established. The courses in display and typographic

design under Bayer, Moholy-Nagy, Tschichold, and others revolutionized the field of type.

Metal work by Marianna Brandt

Bauhaus designs have passed so completely into the visual

language of the twentieth century that it is now difficult to appreciate how revolutionary they were on first appearance. Certain designs, such as Breuer's tubular chair and his basic table and cabinet designs, Gropius's designs for standard unit furniture, and designs by other faculty members and students for stools, stacking chairs, dinnerware, lighting fixtures, textiles, and typography so appealed to popular tastes that they are still manufactured today.