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For anyone interested in evocative modern interiors, the notion of Bauhaus interior design probably comes up a lot. Whether or not you’re fully aware of the history of the style, what grew out of an unusual art school in Germany has influenced so much of the world that surrounds us today. Below, we unpack the history of the Bauhaus school, the most memorable works to come from it, and how to put its principles into practice within your own home.
What is Bauhaus interior design?
Bauhaus interior design comes from the German art school Bauhaus, which, though open for just 14 years, from 1919 to 1933, has left an indelible mark on art and design. Informed by Germany’s dominance as an industrial powerhouse, and as something of a reaction to the Arts and Crafts movement, pieces associated with the Bauhaus aesthetic typically feature tubular steel, all kinds of metal, and a rejection of ornamentation (a signature that Arts and Crafts is inseparable from).
“The Bauhaus was always a myth, even in its own time, that built itself up through publishing and lectures and excellent photography, getting the word out by manufacturing products, building model homes, all that kind of stuff that always made it press-worthy. It’s always been a place that people wanted to know about, including the people who have always wanted to disagree with it or take it down,” explains Ellen Lupton, coeditor of The ABCs of Bauhaus, curator at Cooper Hewitt, and professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). “I feel that every generation has to overthrow the Bauhaus, rediscover it in their own way, myself included. It’s a very enduring myth, and the creators of the school helped keep that myth alive for many decades after the school closed by coming to the US and doing a big show at MoMA and teaching at Harvard and opening a new Bauhaus in Chicago or with the Black Mountain College experience.”
While “mass-produced” isn’t exactly the most attractive thing for decor to be in the 21st century, Bauhaus designs weren’t about cutting corners to make items as cheap as possible, but rather about figuring out how to thoughtfully, beautifully create simple objects with the new tools and materials at hand.
The origins of Bauhaus style
Although it’s hard to pin down exactly when and where certain interior design styles originated, for Bauhaus the impetus couldn’t be more clear. In 1919, architect Walter Gropius opened a new kind of art school in Weimar, Germany. The structure of the Bauhaus school broke the boundaries between craftspeople and artists, placing all students in the same workshops where they experimented and learned hands-on, something that was completely unheard of at the time for art students.
While the Arts and Crafts movement had been roaring in the decades prior in England and elsewhere, Gropius and other Bauhaus leaders opted to specifically design for mass production. Home goods, like tea kettles and cutlery, and furniture pieces were approached with a fresh eye. The students at the Bauhaus were concerned with much more than industrial design, furniture design, and architecture—all of the creative arts and crafts were studied and practiced: painting, sculpture, and textiles included.
The Bauhaus movement spread when the school was shut down in 1933 by the Nazis, and many of the style’s practitioners fled Germany ahead of World War II. This naturally propagated the design movement’s ideals across the world in the middle of the century.
Defining elements and characteristics
- Geometric shapes
- Clean lines
- Industrial production
- Functionality first
- Primary colors
- Rationality
Examples of Bauhaus design
Marcel Breuer’s Wassily chair
Perhaps the most enduring product of the Bauhaus furniture designers, the Wassily Chair was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925 and named after Bauhaus teacher Wassily Kandinsky. The chair is a stylish interpretation of a club chair’s skeleton made with just tubular steel and leather. In an interview with Breuer on Knoll’s website, the designer explains that the enduring design of the bicycle is what inspired the chair. When a young architect explained how the tubular steel was bent, Breuer was fixated on the idea.
“I started to think about steel tubes, which are bent into frames—probably that is the material you could use for an elastic and transparent chair. Typically, I was very much engaged with the transparency of the form,” he explained. “That is how the first chair was made…. I realized that the bending had to go further. It should only be bent with no points of welding on it so it could also be chromed in parts and put together.”
A year after the design, he explains, “the whole Bauhaus” was furnished with his tubular steel creations. These days, it’s hard to imagine scrolling through an Instagram feed without encountering a Wassily chair—if you include all the dupes scattered across the market, that is.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair
Designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Barcelona chair is another tubular steel and leather creation to come from the Bauhaus. The piece was first seen in the New York apartment that Mies van der Rohe designed for modernist architect Philip Johnson in 1930—the same year Mies van der Rohe took over as the final director before the design school’s demise—then gained further acclaim when it was used again in Johnson’s infamous Glass House.
Josef Alber’s nesting tables
Designed by Josef Albers in 1926 during his tenure as the artistic director of the furniture workshop at the Bauhaus, the Albers nesting tables are celebrated for their unique yet simple design and still in production to this day. Nearly 40 years after designing these tables, Albers published Interaction of Color, a still-influential tome about art education and color theory. As the tables’ color-blocked lacquered tops demonstrate, he’d clearly been a master of color for decades.
Marianne Brandt’s teapot
Studying under László Moholy-Nagy, a teacher and artist who also taught Breuer, then later teaching at the Bauhaus herself, Marianne Brandt’s most memorable works from the Bauhaus came from her time in the metal workshop, which Moholoy-Nagy ran. “She designed some of the most famous, iconic pieces,” Lupton states. Her tea sets are particularly well-known, as are her lamps, for their unparalleled simplicity.
How to achieve this aesthetic
While you can bring the Bauhaus ideals into play in your own space by emphasizing industrial materials like chrome and ensuring that everything is serving a defined purpose, the most straightforward way of bringing Bauhaus design into your own home is with one of the aforementioned figures’ own designs. The Wassily chair, the Barcelona chair, and Albers tables are all pieces you can bring into your space to celebrate your appreciation of the style.
These pieces can be thousands of dollars, so if you’re on a budget, consider some of the many pieces that represent these designs, like the Wassily chair minis or Sean Brown’s Off-White Chairs blanket, which features chairs from many different periods and styles, including the Wassily. Many of Italian metalware company Alessi’s products reflect the spirit of the Bauhaus—even if they weren’t expressly designed by Bauhaus figures, and even though just as many of their pieces are far too spirited to fall in line perfectly with the rational ideals of the Bauhaus.
