Bauhaus
Gropius directed the Bauhaus in Germany from its founding in 1919 until 1928. He was thirty-five years old when he was appointed Director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Weimar, Germany. One of his first decisions was to combine this school with the School of Arts and Crafts and rename the new institution the Bauhaus. Bauhaus is taken from the contraction of two German words: Bauen (to build) and Haus (house), and translated means "House of Building." The Bauhaus took an all-embracing attitude toward design, encouraging collaboration and taking into consideration not only the individual object or building but also the larger context, the community, and the environment. Training required the student to study the fine arts, to learn the skills of a craft, to understand the properties of materials, and to be familiar with technology and factory production. The Bauhaus embraced new materials, new technology, and sought to create a new aesthetic, unencumbered by historical tradition. Students were taught that beauty was to be found in the economy of form, in expressive use of materials, and in solutions that were suitable, economical, practical, and therefore inherently elegant.
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