Better Living with the Bauhaus

Light was an important element at the Bauhaus – natural light, allowed to flow resplendently into the room through large glass facades …

One or two lamps by Marianne Brandt can still be found on the shelves as well. She was a student in the metal workshop and as well as the world-famous tea-infuser (here in the picture) she designed in all 28 lamp models at the Bauhaus …

Born in Hungary, he came to the Bauhaus in 1920 and attracted attention a mere two years later with his ‘ti 1a’ lattice chair. Marcel Breuer said about his creation, “The starting point for the chair was the problem of combining sitting comfortably with the simplest possible construction.”

Breuer covered narrow slats with strips of fabric, which saved both materials and time. But most importantly he created something that was both – chair and sculpture.

… after the Bauhaus teacher Wassily Kandinsky (here in the picture: second from the right), who is supposed to have really liked the chair.

Carl Fieger liked it too. A close colleague of Walter Gropius and Bauhaus teacher of architectural drawing, he drew inspiration from Breuer’s ‘B3’ …

… and designed these unusual club chairs for his house.

In this seating group, on the other hand, Fieger completely re-interprets traditional bentwood designs – tubular steel meets bistro chair.

Under Hannes Meyer’s leadership as Bauhaus Director (1928 to 1930) furniture was to be not just functional but above all cheap and easily transportable …

… like this folding deckchair, the ‘ti 240’ from 1929.

This meant that tubular steel – much more expensive than wood – was now only used very sparingly …

Wood meets metal in his desk as well.

This timeless desk looks like something from a present-day furniture catalogue.

Bauhaus student Vera Meyer Waldeck designed it in 1927. Besides this, she also designed a lot of other furniture pieces for the ADGB Trade Union School in Bernau near Berlin.

Kitchens à la Bauhaus were modern too: in 1923 the Bauhäusler presented an early fitted kitchen in the Haus am Horn in Weimar – and that was three years before Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky created the famous Frankfurt Kitchen. And then there is this kitchen design from 1927 by Carl Fieger.

While cupboards were fitted into the kitchen and optically concealed, they were allowed to show themselves off to full self-confident effect in the living room – like this one made of various rectangular elements, which was crafted by Marcel Breuer in 1923 for the Haus am Horn in Weimar.

And what about Bauhaus beds?

In the Prellerhaus in Dessau you can try them out for yourself if you rent what was once a studio flat occupied by Bauhäusler.

If the student pallet bed is too plain for you, then maybe you should take a leaf out of Fieger’s book. He preferred bright colours for his bedroom.

“Less is More” was the credo of Ludwig Mies von der Rohe, who found a stone bench quite enough here in Ticino.

As it happens, the third Bauhaus Director designed his world-famous seating furniture – such as the cantilevered Weissenhof Chair or the Barcelona-Chair – before his time at the Bauhaus, but they are traded under this brand nowadays anyway.

His time in office is when architecture really came into its own.