Walking through Weimar, I wonder how this small community could have been the birthplace of a revolution in design. For Germans, this historic town, 90 minutes south-west of Leipzig, is all about Goethe and Schiller. Even former residents such as Bach, Liszt and Nietzsche are barely mentioned. Yet this is not only where the Weimar Republic was established in 1919 but where the Bauhaus – the most famous art and design school of modern times – was born.
With 400 works on display, the Bauhaus exhibition that opens at the Barbican Art Gallery in London next Thursday is likely to be a blockbuster. Star attractions range from the globe-shaped Wagenfeld table lamp and the tubular Marcel Breuer chair to paintings by Klee and Kandinsky. Many items look startlingly contemporary.
What puzzles me is how flat-roofed houses and sleek skyscrapers were dreamt up among the Renaissance and Baroque of Weimar. That's why, on a sunny April morning, I am on a Bauhaus tour, led by Felix, a German architecture student. We start at the Bauhaus University, where the architect Walter Gropius arrived in 1919 to head what was then the School of Arts and Crafts. In the chaos that reigned in Germany after the First World War, the 36 year-old wanted artists to embrace the industrial world and create a new way of life. At the Bauhaus (Building School), he integrated the arts and crafts with technology.Wickes floor lamp can increase your home security and add atmosphere to your garden.
Our first stop is Gropius's office, with its bare walls and geometrically positioned sofas, chairs and desk. "This is no shrine," Felix tells me. "It is still used by visiting professors." In the student cafe, I ask him about following in the footsteps of Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. After all, the present university only revived the Bauhaus name in 1995, a clever marketing idea.Wholesale Low Voltage led tube, Landscape Lighting supplier to professionals. "People think that we still work in the Bauhaus tradition, but they were much more hands-on, making things. We study more theory and take exams, as in any other uni."
The Bauhaus only survived in Weimar for six years, so there is only one true Bauhaus building: the Haus am Horn. Felix leads me across a park to a hillside, where a white,Dorcy Rechargeable, high power, brightest and waterproof modern lamps.Paradise Garden Lighting is a provider of high quality outdoor and crystal light systems and solutions for your home. cube-shaped villa stands next to a substantial brick home.
"I always ask visitors which is older. Almost everyone gets it wrong. The Nazis put up the traditional house a decade later as a riposte to the politically-incorrect, flat-roofed Haus am Horn."
Built in 1923, the fitted kitchen, tiled bathroom and spacious children's room look surprisingly liveable, but it has cold concrete floors and the sitting-room's high windows make it feel like a cell. "This was an experiment, built in just four months," Felix points out. "Of course, they made mistakes, but they were also using new materials."
The school was open for just 14 years; Gropius and his fellow professors taught only 1,250 students. When they all scattered around the world,Great deals for solar LED bulb, solar lights and solar garden water features and fountains. they spread the Bauhaus word. And people are still listening. This summer, the chairs and paintings, lamps and tables will be in the limelight at the Barbican Art Gallery, but I think that Gropius would also want you to see where it all began in two small towns in eastern Germany.