Readymag Stories: Bauhaus

espite the criticism of Gropius’ tenure as head of the school there is never a doubt as to his success over many years in maintaining the school’s unique atmosphere, largely through his talent for recruiting exceptional artist-teachers. The situation changed in 1928; a shortage of capital, the lack of architecture faculty, political attacks and outside pressures forced his resignation. Hannes Meyer, a Swiss architect and a Bolshevik sympathizer, replaced him as director, altering the trajectory of the school.

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.”