o commemorate the school’s 10th anniversary a major Bauhaus exhibition was staged in Zurich. The design projects included furnishings for an average apartment and furniture for defined groups of consumers. The designers, aiming to lower costs, avoided unnecessary details. The designs included folding tables and chairs, as well as a cupboard for a bachelor apartment.
ne of the best known of Vkhutemas’ teacher-architects, Konstantin Melnikov, designed and built his own home and studio on a lot in central Moscow. Its two intersecting cylinders sum up Melnikov’s utopian vision of communal housing and his personal ideal of the home as castle. The structure is also a fantastic testament to efficiency and economy in use of materials in the impoverished conditions of the late 1920s.
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Melnikov House
Photo by Igor Palmin
Narkomfin building, 1930s
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.
