Readymag Stories: Bauhaus

The color scheme for the Finance Ministry, done in collaboration with Moisei Ginzburg, demonstrates Scheper’s theory of the function of color in architecture, used earlier for the Bauhaus school complex and faculty residence in Dessau. Scheper believed color affects people physically and psychologically. He argued that spaces colored according to such ideas could be made more conducive to heightened work performance or rest and relaxation. He conceived of color in architecture as the “skin of the body,” not simply an external layer, and held that it shaped the expressive force of the architecture. This was the first substantial interaction of the two modernist schools: Ginzburg, the Constructivist and creator of super-rational and functional cells, collaborating with Scheper, the Bauhaus designer and specialist in color. The result was a utopian residential building whose coordinated layout and color scheme was meant to help fashion a new human being. Unfortunately furniture designed by students from Vkhutemas’ woodworking and metalworking departments was not used for the Finance Ministry building but was instead used later for the residence on Gogolevsky Boulevard (the RZhSKT, “demonstration building”).

Another famous graduate, Georgi Krutikov, became drawn to the challenges of flight and astronautics. His radical idea of the evolution of building “from cave to home in the air,” reflecting “the human desire to rise above the earth,” took the form of his graduation project: “The Flying City.”

Meyer organized studio production of standardized products designed to be affordable by all segments of the population. The school’s greatest commercial success is a line of wall-coverings produced in the mural-painting studio. Instead of little flowers the wall-coverings use geometric ornaments suggestive of the structure of cloth. The advantage of the wall-coverings is that the images are small and irregular, making it easy to apply the strips to the wall. Another plus is that small rooms are made to seem larger.

annes Meyer was replaced as director (forced out because of Bolshevik sympathies) by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Like Gropius, Mies studied under Peter Behrens. He stayed away from politics but found himself confronted by many challenges, some connected to the economic crisis of 1929, others arising from Dessau’s disaffection for the Bauhaus. The city eventually halted all aid to the school, lowering budgets significantly and initiating no further public commissions.

In 1931 Hannes Meyer, along with a team of other architects, moved to the Soviet Union, aiming to realize revolutionary ideas but became quickly disillusioned and returned to Germany.

ith the push to industrialize the country at fever pitch, there were shortages of specialists for industry. Institutions of higher learning were expected to produce them quickly. Vkhutemas’ hybrid structure (art/crafts) began to crack. A decree ordered the transfer of students from industrial and art departments to specifically industrial and art schools. The teachers and directors became forced to defend the notion of an architecture department as a creative discipline against the government’s repeated attempts to regard it as an engineering specialty.

Construction eventually ceased on the Finance Ministry complex. The design cast an enormous influence on Le Corbusier, whose famous Marseilles “residential unit” (1945) incorporates Moisei Ginzburg’s Type F plan.