"The overriding questions today are: How do we live, how do we live, what kind of community form do we pursue?"
This was the manifesto of the Bauhaus at the Stuttgart exhibition in 1924. This question still makes sense today a hundred years later, and the Bauhaus's answer has been influencing us, from a chair, to a house, to a city.
"Start with a chair"
Text | Jia Dongting
How has design affected our lives?
What distinguishes good design from bad design?
Is it designed for the good quality of the masses to afford, or is it designed for the good taste and high aesthetic of the niche elite? Can I have both?
In today's China, design has become a trend and a label, but these questions are not easy to answer. As a journalist, I had the privilege of sitting in the front row and witnessing the "golden age" of China's urbanization in the past few decades, with various star buildings taking turns to build "utopian" cities with the power of destruction and decay.
But as the boom gradually receded, I also witnessed people's confusion in front of landmark buildings with different styles: should we pursue a sense of "strange" curved shape, or the majesty of traditional official architecture, or the rationality and openness of simple geometric structures? How do they talk to each other and how do they choose?
Bauhaus Weimar New Museum Commemorative Exhibition | Photo by Yu Chuzhong
In one family after another, there is a similar confusion: European, American, new Chinese, Japanese, Nordic winds emerge endlessly, which one can represent "me"? More and more people are beginning to turn to modernism in their minds, a Mies chair, a cantilever lamp, it seems to have become an indispensable label for a good life and good taste.
But what exactly does modernism mean? Although there are many modern buildings in China, the modernist process is missing in China, resulting in a rupture in home, architecture and urban design. On the other hand, postmodernism, which is more inclined to individuality, desire and opportunity, is constantly washing away the simple and rational values of modernism. These are the sources of our confusion today.
Van Gogh's painting "Van Gogh's Chair"
Gauguin's Chair
In September, I went to the Bauhaus, one of the roots of modernism, for answers.
In 1919, the Bauhaus school was born in Germany, passed through Weimar, Dessau and Berlin, and closed in 1933, marking its centennial in 2019. I followed the Bauhaus migration path, starting in Weimar, the cultural and spiritual center of Germany in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the birthplace of the Weimar Republic, which gave birth to the seeds of bauhaus rebirth and preserved the first Bauhaus school.
After that, I came to Dessau, once the "German Silicon Valley", where the industrial glory has now faded, but the 7 years here are the most prosperous period of the Bauhaus, with a real Bauhaus school and a social housing area that carries the ideal of "design for the public". The final stop is Berlin, where the Bauhaus ended and where its spiritual fire burned.
The Bauhaus School in Dessau attracts tourists from all over the world to make a pilgrimage to | Photo by Yu Chuzhong
The Bauhaus existed in Germany between the two world wars, a school, a style, and more importantly, an idea, like a comet across a hundred years of historical time and space. Although modernism began to sprout in the early 20th century and responded to it across Europe, the Bauhaus made "art and technology: a new unity" a reality, packaging a series of design ideas into a system, such as "white box" houses, sans-serif fonts, steel pipe furniture, glass skyscrapers, and so on.
It represents the ideal of design for the masses, offering practical, economical and clear design principles, and modernism associated with the Bauhaus reshapes the world.
To retrace the Path of the Bauhaus is to pursue the birth, development and flow of the modernist movement, and at the same time, to make us reflect on the present. Globalization and digitalization have led to a diversity of architecture and design, which will also provide different solutions to more complex social problems.
The future evolution may be shorter, but there are two possible trends: sustainable buildings and resource conservation to address human unbridled behavior, and the use of the digital revolution to produce ultra-intelligent buildings. This means adapting to the preferences of different users, which will lead to a total liberation of residence. Ultimately, the user will replace the designer and make a decision about residency.
Photographer Michael Wolfe photographed the collection of photographs Sitting in China, using a chair to reflect the characteristics of an era. 100
Years later, perhaps the greater significance of the Bauhaus is not to give answers, but to ask questions – it is like a "black box" of ideas that "design changes society" since the 1920s, and the Bauhaus's legacy is only valuable if new questions are constantly put in.
"The overriding questions today are: How do we live, how do we live, what kind of community form do we pursue?" This was the manifesto of the Bauhaus at the Stuttgart exhibition in 1924. This question still makes sense today, and the Bauhaus's answer has always influenced us, from a chair, to a house, to a city.
The Bauhaus symbol that impressed me the most was triggered by a steel tube chair. It was a famous photograph of the Bauhaus in 1927: a woman in a metal mask posing in a free and confident pose, sitting in a leather-faced steel-tube armchair. She leaned on the armrest with her right elbow crossed and wore a striped sleeveless skirt and strappy mid-heeled leather shoes, revealing healthy and smooth arms and calves. The mask faces sideways, obscuring the true expression, but more successfully arousing the curiosity of the viewer – who is behind the mask? Why sit in this chair?
Woman in a mask
When visiting the "Original Bauhaus" special exhibition in Berlin, this photograph is one of the iconic exhibits in the exhibition hall. Every detail in the photograph has an allusion – the mask was designed by oskar schlemmer, a Bauhaus master who taught theatre, the dress fabric was made by lis beyer of the textile workshop, and the tube chair was designed by Marcel Breuer, the Bauhaus "young master."
This photograph vividly reflects the experimental spirit of the Bauhaus at that time, which was the "play party work" advocated by Johannes Itten, one of the first masters of the Bauhaus - "games become feasts, feasts become jobs, and work becomes games".
The recognizable steel tube chair in the photo is regarded as one of the modern design totems. It has appeared countless times on the title page of home magazines, in business halls or conference rooms, and is even more popular in art museums.
In 1925, at the age of 23, Marcel Brauer created the chair. Brauer is said to have ridden an Adler bicycle through the Bauhaus campus, and one day he looked down and noticed that the bicycle's "steel pipe that looks like macaroni": can this pipe do anything else? After all, this is a modern material, relatively inexpensive, and can be mass-produced. Maybe it could be a chair... With the help of a plumber, he bent a chrome steel pipe into many rounded right angles to form a chair frame, which was then fitted with a canvas-supported seat, armrest and backrest.
This is the first steel tube chair in history "Vasily chair". It not only opens up an objective, functional, machine aesthetic, but also means standardization, economy, and is a symbol of the Bauhaus's "design for the masses". Next to this photo, a replica chair and mask are also placed for visitors to parody. When I also put on my mask and sat in a chair, I had a hard time distinguishing between being attracted to the beauty and function of design itself or being fascinated by becoming part of the history of modern design.
View the Bauhaus exhibition from the berlin art gallery staircase
What exactly is behind the chair? Journalist Xu Jingjing followed her curiosity and delved into the history of the development of chairs in the 20th century. She said that the chair is not just a product that satisfies a certain function, but is about human power, identity and emotion. Yue Han combed through the ins and outs of the classic designs triggered by the Bauhaus, from furniture, lamps, tableware, fonts, and architecture.
Our story about the Bauhaus and modernist design begins with a chair.
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A Journey to the Bauhaus centennial road: starting with a chair (Jia Dongting)
From a Chair to a City: The Bauhaus Changed (Jia Dongting)
The Bauhaus Road: Through The Landscape of History (Jia Dongting)
The Human Chair: Power, Identity and Emotion (Xu Jingjing)
Understanding the design, the chair is talking (Xu Jingjing)
Bauhaus-influenced architecture (Yue Han)
Variations of Bauhaus furniture (Li Mingjie, Yue Han)
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