Page 56 - Best of 2019 English

The material for the “new age”
Our review of the Bauhaus anniversary year 2019: the influential design school gave pride of place to steel as its preferred material
The attributes of the Bauhaus ideals read like a description of steel as a material: its teachings were geared towards functionality and ratio-
nality, plain forms, unembellished austerity, straight vertical and horizontal lines and a certain coolness, if not coldness . Bauhaus architecture preferred the cubic form and opted for novel materials such as glass – and of course steel . It also embraced a clear-cut geometry, likewise visible in the design prod- ucts of the art school .
Walter Gropius – architect, founder and first director of the Bauhaus – pursued a functional-minimalist concept years before founding the State Bauhaus as an art school . Together with Adolf Meyer he drew up plans for a factory facility built by Fagus-GreCon and Weinig Grecon in Alfeld, Lower Saxony, in 1911 . The structure anticipated much of what would later define the Bauhaus style . This included the cubic shape and the sup- porting structure – a skeletal construction made of steel girders and enclosed by a cur-
tain-type facade made of glass . Some of the construction materials were supplied by what was then Peiner Walzwerk – today owned
by Peiner Träger GmbH, a subsidiary of the Salzgitter Group .
The second pillar of the Bauhaus school was the design of everyday objects such as tea kettles, lamps and furniture . Steel was to play a crucial role in many designs and products . Perhaps the best-known and still omnipres- ent example of this is the "cantilever chair”
– which has no back legs and consists of a frame made of a single bent metal tube . It was the properties of the seamless precision steel tubes invented by Mannesmann that gave the chair’s construction sufficient elasticity to make it free-swinging .
Bauhaus tubular steel furniture achieved global fame, the most famous specimens having been designed by Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe . Some of them are still in production today – and like many oth- er successful Bauhaus designs, it goes without saying that they are made of steel .
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