Contextual Studies

The Bauhaus Design Movement and its affect on the Modern Design Community
The Bauhaus Movement: Product Design
Bauhaus is a German design movement which in 1919 radically changed the entire design
industry. The basis of the Bauhaus movement is the method of designing products which emphasis
function over form. Designers take a design and remove any components or features that are not
fundamental to the functionality of the overall product. More specifically, if a component is only
included to make the product more aesthetically pleasing it would then be removed. Bauhaus
Designers made sure they only used the primary colours: red, blue and yellow. These few colours
soon became the ideal colour scheme that all Bauhaus products should use. The also made sure
that Bauhaus products could also be identified based on their colour scheme. Some of the
Bauhaus designers also tried to create simple products that were easy made so as to be put into
mass production.
A well-known Bauhaus product is the Barcelona Chair, created by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and
Lilly Reich. It is a simple chair design consisting of few materials: nickel-plated steel for the
framework, leather for the cushion covers and foam for the cushion padding. Due to its simplicity, it
was very easy to manufacture. The Barcelona chair was designed to suit a purpose first and look
aesthetically pleasing second rather than look pretty and not fulfil its function properly.
Bauhaus Impact on Architecture
Bauhaus did not just have a big impact on product design, it also impacted the architecture
community, even though the Bauhaus school itself did not have an Architecture department.The
architectural community started to follow a similar ethos to product designers, where they would
simplify designs to make them flat packable and which could then be constructed in a short period
of time. The most famous Bauhaus architectural design is the Huf Haus in the 1920s. The Huf
Haus design is a...