The Bauhaus legacy and the return to craft
How the most influential design school of the twentieth century forgot its own principles.
The Bauhaus legacy and the return to craft
How the most influential design school of the twentieth century forgot its own principles.
The Bauhaus, founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius in Weimar, began with a manifesto advocating the unity of art and craft. Gropius wanted to abolish the separation between artist and artisan. Students learned weaving, pottery, woodworking and metalsmithing before they were allowed to begin designing. The idea was that you can only design what you can also make.
Frank Whitford describes in his standard work Bauhaus how that original vision gradually shifted. Under the influence of the New Objectivity and industrialization, the craft element was increasingly pushed to the background. By the time the Bauhaus closed its doors in 1933, it had de facto become a school for industrial design. The legacy that remained, the clean lines, functionalism, less is more, was a half legacy. The hand had disappeared.
Richard Sennett analyzes in The Craftsman why that hand matters. Craftsmanship is not nostalgia. It is a way of knowing that differs fundamentally from theoretical knowledge. The carpenter who works wood understands the material in a way that no drawing can convey. The potter who throws clay feels resistance and possibilities that you cannot read in a manual. That bodily knowledge, what Sennett calls "tacit knowledge," forms the basis for design that truly functions.
The irony is that the contemporary design world honors the Bauhaus while doing the opposite of what Gropius intended. Designers design on screens for production machines they have never touched. The distance between drawing and material is greater than ever. And the products, however elegant they look, lack the quality that arises when the maker knows the material.
The return to craft visible in ceramics, woodworking, textiles and food is not a retro trend. It is a correction to half a century in which we eliminated the hand from the design process and lost something essential in the process.
Sources: Frank Whitford, Bauhaus (Thames & Hudson, 1984); Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (Yale University Press, 2008).
Source: Frank Whitford, Bauhaus (Thames & Hudson, 1984); Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (Yale University Press, 2008)