The
Gendered Bauhaus: Tempering Idealism with Realism
Mary-Elizabeth Williams (CAS '06), who
graduated magna cum laude, with a degree in
Art History and a minor in American Studies, will be attending
the Art History M.A. Program at UMass Amherst beginning in Fall
2006.
Established in a desire to “create a new guild of craftsmen,
without the class distinctions which raise an arrogant barrier
between the craftsman and the artist,” the Bauhaus emitted an
aura of progress (Gropius 1). The Bauhaus school began in a
flurry of dramatic utopian ideals that envisioned equality among
all artists and craftsman. The architecture of the Bauhaus,
characterized by the “form follows function” mantra, intended
to reform the current style of living through its constructions.
Considering the needs of the “New Man” in post-war Germany,
the Bauhaus architects pledged to create a new form of architecture
that would provide the key to a new way of life. Walter Gropius,
the headmaster of the Bauhaus at its founding in 1919, strongly
believed that Bauhaus homes would be a “design of life’s processes”
(Dearstyne 37).
Contradictory to the Bauhaus’ utopian vision, the school’s de
facto gender policy was not as progressive as historians claim.
Female students were treated as second-class artists, relegated
to interior design departments, and refused entry into the profit-oriented
workshops, such as the Architecture Workshop. Agreeing in large
part with the definition of a woman as a wife and mother solely,
the Bauhaus school sought to teach women skills that would be
useful in their socially defined roles. Yet, in their pursuit
to design domestic spaces for the next generation of Germans
the Bauhaus architects failed to take into account the contemporary
mores and gender roles of the post-war era. Believing they could
overcome gender conflicts within their own school, architects
of the Bauhaus school sought to transform domestic spaces in
order to promote changes in the economic and social structures
of everyday life. Resisting and ultimately dismissing gender
equality within the school walls, Bauhaus architectural designs
failed to create effective egalitarian spaces (Herck 140).
A Post-War Germany: Citizens of the Weimar Republic and Students
at the Bauhaus
Although the female role became increasing fluid in the Weimar
Republic, gaining the right to vote in January 1919, social
boundaries remained unchanged. Ute Frevent argued in Women in
German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation
that the Weimar Republic offered women a contradictory message.
She stated:
On the one hand it upheld the constitutional guarantee of full
equality in political, family, occupational and moral affairs;
on the other, it insisted that the sexes were essentially different,
and that women had a particular, feminine cultural mission to
fulfill. (Frevert 203)
The Weimar Constitution promised equality, yet it would be
incorrect to perceive this as an inauguration of a egalitarian
society (Frevert 170). Instead of offering pure and unbridled
equality, the Weimar Republic allowed the free development of
the female character. The goal of the Gropius designed Bauhaus
curriculum, beginning with a Preliminary Course and progressing
to a specialized workshop, was intended to allow for the free
development of character unbiased by art traditions. In his
essay “Unity in Diversity,” Gropius wrote: “We sought an approach
to education which would promote a creative state of mind” (Gropius
29). Although encouraging the free develop of character, the
conflict between traditional maternal roles and more liberal,
flexible roles of femininity would clash at the Bauhaus school.
Dissolving Distinctions Between the Arts and Creating Equal
Opportunities in Education
Calling together the “hands of a million workers as the crystalline
symbol of a new and coming faith,” the Bauhaus school declared
the end of ‘salon style’ teaching (Gropius 1). The April 1919
Manifesto of the Bauhaus School proclaimed the beginning of
new era where distinctions between fine artists and craftsmen
would be dissolved. The Bauhaus Manifesto energetically declared:
Architects, painters, sculptors, we must all return to crafts!
For there is no such thing as ‘professional art.’ There is no
essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The
artist is an exalted craftsman. (Gropius 1)
Yet, Gropius’ manifesto failed to account for the gender associations
of arts and crafts. The arts and crafts categories are implicitly
gendered: high art being a male domain, but crafts being a female
leisure occupation linked to the domestic sphere. Crafts are
romantic and idealistic, recalling domestic and maternal qualities,
and thus have an undisputed female gender. Gropius’ desire to
eliminate distinctions between arts and crafts correlated to
his personal desire to eliminate distinctions between men and
women. In his April 1919 welcoming address, Gropius explained
that he would not accept female amateurism at the school. He
advised the students:
No distinction between the beautiful and the strong sex. Absolutely
equal rights, but also absolutely equal duties. No consideration
for ladies; at work all craftsman. I shall strongly oppose the
limited occupation with pretty little salon pictures to pass
the time. (Gropius 193)
Gropius’s declaration of gender equality illustrated the school’s
progressive intentions. Although expecting new social freedom,
the female students at the Bauhaus did not find the “equal”
rights or equal duties that Gropius had promised. Upon arriving
at the school many female students discovered instead a prejudiced
curriculum where great distinctions were made between the “beautiful”
sex and the “strong” (Gropius 193).
The Weaving Department and a Female Curriculum
The admissions policy of the Bauhaus school stated: “Any person
of good repute, without regard to age or sex, whose previous
education is deemed adequate by the Council of Masters, will
be admitted, as far as space permits” (Weltge 17). Although
the official admissions policy was progressive, when the school
was flooded with applications from women the senior masters
began questioning the equal-admissions policy and egalitarian
philosophies. The Bauhaus Council of Masters, aware that the
prospects for women in the professional world were less than
optimistic in the political and social landscape of post-War
Germany, remained reluctant to educate women who would simply
become housewives (Frevert 179). Thus, soon after the founding
of the Bauhaus movement, the school turned its back on egalitarian
education.
Instead of training female students for the profit-oriented
art business, the Bauhaus’ program for women forced students
on a path to domesticity.1 Although Gropius believed there to
be no difference between the “beautiful” sex and the “strong”
sex, he ultimately agreed with the Form Masters, suggesting
in 1920 a “tough separation at a time of acceptance, most of
all for the female sex, whose numbers are to strongly represented”
(Weltge 42). Modifying his 1919 utopian vision, Gropius declared
in the 1926 “Dessau Bauhaus – Principles for Bauhaus Production,”
In our experience it is not advisable for women to work in
heavy crafts such as cabinetmaking, et cetera. For this reason
a distinct women’s department is increasingly developing at
the Bauhaus, occupied in particular with textile work… We are
fundamentally opposed to the training of women as architects.
(Gropius 1)
In 1920 the senior masters instituted classes for women concentrating
on interior design and created a Weaving Workshop to train women
for careers in the domestic sphere. Unpublicized documents from
the school show that the Council of Masters demanded a reduction
of the so-called “female element” (Baumhoff 129). They stated:
The numerical proportion of male and female students is such
that, without question, the admission of ladies must be restrained.
The pottery, wood sculpture, et cetera workshops are particularly
overflowing with women. I therefore propose that for the foreseeable
future only woman of very exceptional talent be accepted. (Baumhoff
129)
Within the first six months of the school’s founding at Weimar,
the separation between the genders was completed.
Although the Bauhaus students enjoyed new social freedoms at
the canteen, festivals, and weekly dances, the constricting
curriculum and development of an exclusively female Weaving
Workshop created tension and dissent within the school’s walls.
Despite the redefinition of the curriculum, the female students
maintained their desire for artistic training and sought out
positions in workshops such as the Mural Painting and Metal
Workshops. The female students often viewed the weaving program
as a compulsory evil – a so-called “necessity to be tolerated
for the sake of contact with painters” (Weltge 41). As Anni
Albers, a student in the Weaving Department from 1922 to 1930,
notes: “Weaving? Weaving I thought was too sissy. I was looking
for a real job: I went into weaving unenthusiastically, as merely
the least objectionable choice” (Weltge 45). The female Bauhaus
students, resentful of the restrictive curriculum, appreciated
the new educational opportunities available in post-war Germany.
The Weaving Workshop: Gunta Stölzl and the Development
of a Bauhaus Style
Instead of integrating females into the student body, woman
at the Bauhaus school were segregated into the Weaving Workshop
despite their artistic skills or previous experience. As Sigfrid
Wortman Weltge notes in Woman’s Work: Textile Art from the Bauhaus,
the weaving curriculum lacked the “solid professional underpinning”
found in the other workshops (Weltge 44). Hindered by a laissez-faire
attitude and lowered expectations, the Weaving Workshop’s artistic
output was mired compared to the male dominated workshops. According
to Gunta Stölzl:
We did not found our workshop on sentimental romanticism nor
in protest against machine weaving. Rather, we wanted to develop
the greatest variation of fabrics by the simplest means, and
thus make it possible for students to realize their own ideas.
(Stadler-Stölz 56)
Yet, while Stölzl claimed the department was devoid of
“sentimental romanticism,” she described the weaving program
in idealistic language with sensitivity and emotionality. In
“Weaving at the Bauhaus” she spoke of the workshop’s desire
to inspire a “love of the material, a feeling for the many,
varied characteristics of the yarns, anticipatory imagination,
a sure sense of color, patience, perseverance, ingenuity, and
nimbleness” (Stadler-Stölzl 56). Stölzl suggested
that effective weaving compositions required a feminine sensitivity
to texture. The female character of the Weaving Workshop contrasts
with descriptions of the other departments, such as the Mural
Painting Workshop where Wassily Kandinsky developed analytic
and systematic approaches to wall painting. Kandinsky’s three
stages of mural painting, taking form in his Composition series,
have mathematical qualities – giving strong attention to the
“significance of individual elements with their weight, center,
form and character” (Hamilton 331). Kandinsky states:
The drawing instruction at the Bauhaus is training in observation,
exact seeing, and exact delineation, not on the external appearance
of an object but of its constructive elements, their law abiding
force tensions, which can be discovered in given objects and
their law-abiding construction. (Hamilton 331)
While the masculine, high-art Mural Painting Workshop required
an analytic and scientific mind, the feminine Weaving Department
required an emotional sensibility and a sensitive touch.
In the gender-segregated Bauhaus female graduates were unable
to climb the ladder to master positions and competed among themselves
for any available opportunities. After spending six years at
the school, Gunta Stölzl became Form Master of the Weaving
department in 1925 (Figure 1). As the token female Form Master,
Stölzl served as a reminder of the school’s gender biases
(Figure 2). Instead of satisfying the desire for equality, the
existence of Stölzl’s prized position meant that the “women
weavers competed amongst themselves for sought-after positions
in the Weaving Workshop, as there were few other opportunities
available at the Bauhaus at that time for gifted women students”
(Baumhoff 84). Despite her skills and artistic ability, Stölzl’s
leadership came into question after her marriage to Jewish-born
Ariech Sharon in 1929. Upon her marriage, Stölzl forfeited
her German citizenship and became a subject of Palestine. According
to Weltge, “all of this irritated the right wing posse” and
“contributed to their charge of ‘impropriety’” (Weltge 45).
In a letter to her brother Stölzl wrote:
Everything is being destroyed by jealousies and a hunger for
personal power. I am in a difficult position (1) because of
Sharon – H. Meyer, (2) because I am on too friendly terms with
my workshop, (3) because six old-timers have left and the new
ones are being incited by certain people, who, on top of everything,
are supported by the masters. (Weltge 116)
Chased from the school in 1931, Stölzl became a martyr
for the female students. Although the male leaders at the Bauhaus
were motivated to call for Stölzl’s resignation following
her marriage, it was primarily her gender and prominence within
the school which prompted criticism, ultimately leading to her
resignation on September 30, 1931.
According to Anja Baumhoff’s The Gendered World of the Bauhaus,
the “modern art and design of the Bauhaus did indeed have a
reformist school dimension, but was not as progressive or democratic
as its adherents claim” (Baumhoff 147). The Bauhaus school retained
traditional pre-World War I gender relationships. Although women
gained the right to vote, within the outwardly progressive Bauhaus
they became relegated to a segregated wing and required to enroll
in weaving classes which lacked real artistic objective. Instead
of inaugurating a modern utopian society without distinctions
between class and gender, the policies of the Bauhaus school
retrograded back to the conservative view of the female in the
domestic sphere. At the school the internal conflicts between
the oppression of woman and the desire to create a utopian environment
ultimately limited the success of Bauhaus architectural designs.
Bauhaus Theory: Designing for the “New Man”
Bauhaus housing plans are simplified and sparse. Gropius, the
father of the Bauhaus movement, stated:
The organism of a house evolves from the course of events that
have predated it. In a house it is the functions of living,
sleeping, bathing, cooking, eating that inevitably give the
whole design of the house its form... the design is not there
for its own sake, it arises alone from the nature of the building,
from the function it should fulfill. (Gropius 2)
The Bauhaus domestic designs intended to revolutionize the
lives of the inhabitants and inaugurate a modern way of life.
Bauhaus intellectuals believed that through the creation of
utopian art objects and architectural spaces they could create
a new social environment in the post-war period. According to
architectural historian Anja Baumhoff: “The Bauhaus program
intended early on to contribute to a new social, artistic and
spiritual system: a modern order that could be created like
a new social design, which would homogenize, unite, and reorganize
modern mass culture after a disastrous war” (Baumhoff 148).
Taking into account the “individual, family, and societal” needs
of inhabitants, the Bauhaus school ushered in an era of reform.
Attempting to create the ideal living space for the ideal life,
many inhabitants of “form follows function” designs, and especially
female residents, found the designs inflexible and impractical
as realistic domestic spaces. In fact, problems with cleaning,
cooking, maintenance, storage, and privacy were common in Bauhaus
constructions. Gropius’ definitive statement on gender in the
1926 “Dessau Bauhaus – Principles for Bauhaus Production” abruptly
closed the Architectural Workshop to women. In fact, Gropius’
fundamental opposition “to the training of women as architects”
prevented female input in the school’s designs.2 At the Bauhaus
school the suppression of women into the Weaving Workshop by
the paternal Form Masters brought about architectural designs
that lack a sensitive female perspective and are limited in
their functionality as multi-gendered living spaces. Bauhaus
designs tended to create an idealistic domestic sphere where
female inhabitants found it hard to maintain the daily activities
that their socially defined role demanded.
The Desire for Gemutlichkeit in Post-War Germany
In post-war Germany many women returned to their homes after
working in factories, seeking out spaces of “retreat, a sanctuary
for the family, a place to nurture the dignity and culture of
the middle class” (Fiedler 64-79). In Karina Van Herck’s essay
“Only where comfort ends, does humanity begin’: On the ‘coldness’
of avant-garde architecture in the Weimar period,” she argued
that in response to urbanization and industrialization, a German
culture of coziness became part of a “rising ideology of the
private home as a safe haven within the chaos of modernity”
(Herck 124). Yet, believing that spaces could be humanized by
spatial harmony, repose, and proportion alone, Bauhaus designs
repressed “bourgeois comfort” and materialism. Adolf Behne,
social-art theorist and founder of Arbetsrat Für Kunst
with Walter Gropius, called for an end to gemütuch in domestic
architecture.3 He wrote in Die Weiderkehr Der Kunst:
For first of all the European must be wrenched out of his coziness.
Not without good reason the adjective “gemutuch” intensified
becomes “saugemutlich” (swinishly comfortable). Away with coziness!
Only where comfort ends, does humanity begin. (Behne 68)
Arguing that coziness should find its place in the “heart of
the individual,” and not on the “wall of a home,” Bauhaus architects
reduced the “coziness,” or gemutlichkeit, which makes walls
and floors into a home (Meyer 67). In Bauhaus designs, the idea
of the house being a womb for nurturing life is vanquished and
replaced by the masculine idea of the home as a functioning
machine (Sparke 69). Bauhaus architects promoted an agenda of
purity and a desire to sterilize the home to reflect a simpler,
more modern lifestyle. Therefore, “naturalistic ornament” and
“decorative applications of color and line” were reduced and
deleted (Sparke 69).
By reducing all forms of decoration, the Bauhaus architectural
designs denied female inhabitants the opportunity to participate
in modern material consumption. Stripping women of their ability
to differentiate class and exhibit their morality, dignity,
and prosperity through conspicuous consumption, the rejection
of gemutlichket in Bauhaus domestic design was a rejection of
the practice of home making (Herck 131). Design historian Penny
Sparke argues that in their search for purification Bauhaus
architects proposed extreme solutions. According to Sparke:
“In the process of formulating those solutions, they undermined
and repressed, however unwittingly, feminine culture as it was
defined stereotypically at that time” (Sparke 70). Depriving
women of their authority within the house and redefining the
ties between women and the house, Bauhaus architecture rendered
the identity of wife and mother ambivalent (Herck 133). Sterilizing
the home and stripping it of all decoration, the Bauhaus domestic
spaces were not only unwelcoming and “uncozy,” but they also
deprived women the ability to perform the feminine role defined
as proper in the social atmosphere of the Weimar Republic.
Success at the Haus Am Horn: The Cornerstone of Bauhaus Style
and the Female Contribution
The Haus am Horn, shown at the 1923 Bauhaus Exhibition, features
prefabricated industrial material, a maligned flat roof, and
a spared-down appearance that were characteristic of the developing
Bauhaus style. In the newspaper Die Weltbunhne Adolf Behne wrote:
If the term ‘giant box of bricks’ serves as a new paradigm
of the new construction style and clarifies the turning point
of the Bauhaus in an industrial era, then the realization of
the ‘Am Horn Model House’ illustrates the sounds pedagogical
concept of the Bauhaus: teamwork between teachers and students,
and between different workshops all united in a common task:
architecture. (Siebenbrodt 46)
The so-called “life engineers” of Haus am Horn, whether male
or female, worked communally to make the Haus am Horn a success
(Weltge 61).
Infused with new impulses in design and life reform, the Haus
am Horn captured the spirit of the Bauhaus school.
In the gender segregated Bauhaus, Benita Otte was the exception
to the school’s refusal to educate female architects. As a student
in the Weaving Workshop in 1922, Otte was offered employment
in the Architectural Workshop as an architectural drafter and
kitchen planner. Otte’s contribution to the Haus am Horn revolutionized
kitchen design by introducing an open plan (Figure 4). Showing
great insight and understand of female needs in a domestic environment,
Otte’s plan exemplifies the effect a “woman’s touch” can have
on a domestic design. In the tradition of Christine Frederick’s
1914 New Housekeeping, Benita Otte managed to design a “kitchen
so functional that it has become a prototype for the contemporary
kitchen concept” (Weltge 110). Otte’s design, introducing a
rational layout with laborsaving and efficiency techniques,
managed to encapsulate the ideas of Bruno Taut’s 1924 Die Neu
Wohnung and make its philosophies a reality in the Haus am Horn
kitchen (Herck 129). Both Otte and Taut promoted the rationalization
of the household as a means of emancipating women from the daily
drudgery of domestic work. Die Neu Wohnung, one of the most
influential Weimar documents, demanded an end to superfluidity
of the dwelling which condemned women to endless dusting and
sweeping (Herck 129). Building off Taut’s philosophies of rationalization
and emancipation, the success of the Haus am Horn design is
attributed to Otte’s architectural insight and knowledge of
domestic duties.
In Haus am Horn the “naked walls” of the house are warmed and
unified with tapestries produced by female students from the
Weaving department; the textiles “soften the severity and angularity
of the rooms” in the absence of paintings on the bare walls
(Weltge 61). Georg Muche, taking over as Form Master of the
Weaving Workshop in 1921, was able to effectively bring together
weavers. In the living room, a rug by weaver Martha Erp unifies
the space with the rest of the house, providing a sense of comfort
and making the space into a home. Weltge argues that the “boldly
balanced curved and stepped designs beckon the visitor to enter
and then direct the eye onward to the adjoining room” (Weltge
62). The Weaving department’s material additions to the Haus
am Horn supply gemutlichkeit and create a livable space for
all its inhabitants. The material contributions of the weaving
department made the Haus am Horn a success by tempering the
reduction of decoration.
Architectural Models for the “New Man”: The Dessau Director’s
Homes
In 1925, the Bauhaus school moved to Dessau, where Mayor Fritz
Hesse promised funds to build a school and a row of houses for
the Form Masters. A year later, Burgkühnauer Allee was
selected as the site for the directors’ homes – the expansive
Gropius House and three semi-detached houses named the Kandinsky-Klee
house, the Feininger house, and the Muche-Schlemmer house. On
Burgkühnauer Allee the Bauhaus’ distinctive style matured
as the school’s professors initiated a new era of home design.
The glass fronts and white-washed walls, used also at the Haus
am Horn, are typical of the Bauhaus school and later International
Style in America. The government-funded Dessau directors’ houses
were models for a new style of living, and therefore incorporated
luxuries such as walk-in closets, hot water pressure spray in
the kitchen, and a double sofa which could be opened out in
the Gropius Master House. Yet, the coldness and unwelcoming
interiors of the housing designs is characteristic of the Bauhaus
style.
After experiencing the Masters’ Homes (Meisterhaus) for themselves
and living on Burgkühnauer Alle, the wives and families
of many of the Form Masters complained that the models for modern
living were “unsatisfactory,” “unpleasant,” and “almost beyond
endurance” (Feininger 214). The inhabitants of the Form Master’s
homes, expected to lead the way in accepting the new style of
life, discovered that the Master’s Houses designs contained
innate flaws. Besides finding the lack of decoration and colored
walls discomforting, the wives of the Form Masters often complained
of a lack of privacy and a fear of voyeurism. In Kandinsky und
Ich, published in 1976, Nina Kandinsky poignantly stated:
Kandinsky and I were not particularly happy in Gropius’ building.
There were flaws which did not make living particularly comfortable.
Gropius had, for example, made one large wall of the entrance
hall of transparent glass so that anyone could look into the
house from the street. That bothered Kandinsky who would have
preferred his private sphere to be private. Right away he painted
the glass wall white on the inside. (Kandinsky 218)
Painting the transparent glass hallway white, the living room
pale pink with gold leaf, the bedroom almond green, Kandinsky’s
workroom pale yellow, and Nina Kandinsky’s room pale pink, the
Kandinsky family remodeled the Masters’ Houses to fit their
personal needs where the universalized Bauhaus style had failed.
Modifying the Masters’ Houses, creating privacy where it was
lacking, and adding color to create a cozy, home environment,
the Kandinsky’s were able to incorporate the Bauhaus’ utopian
vision into their housing needs and personal tastes.
Conflict in Post-Bauhaus Architecture
Although constructed after the dissolution of the Bauhaus, the
Farnsworth House, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, exemplifies
the gendered problems with Bauhaus architecture. Edith Farnsworth,
a successful doctor in Chicago, was completely excluded from
the design process and construction of her home. For Mies the
“theoretical and formal considerations always came before practical
ones” (Friedman 231). Mies’ philosophical considerations and
desire to create a modern environment failed consider Farnsworth’s
needs as an individual and a single woman. As stated by Alice
T. Friedman in The Making of the Modern House, at the Farnsworth
house “concerns about privacy, or about sexuality and social
life, were repressed; for Mies, the house was a place of contemplation,
an ordered space free of abstractions” (Friedman 247). Mies’
Farnsworth House was intended to be a monument to modern architectural
theory, and not a functional living space.
From the beginning, Edith Farnsworth had many complaints about
the house. Farnsworth’s primary grievance was that the glass
allowed viewers to see her in every moment of her daily life
(Figure 4). Instead of feeling freed and closer to nature, as
was the intention of Mies, Farnsworth described feeling like
a “prowling animal, always on alert” (Friedman 234). Farnsworth
wrote: “I am always restless. Even in the evening. I feel like
a sentinel on guard day and night, I can rarely stretch out
and relax” (Farnsworth 244). According to Mies’ utopian vision,
the glass walls at the Farnsworth House were supposed to allow
a soothing connection with nature. However, Farnsworth found
that the glass walls un-soothing, and instead made her feel
like a constant actor on a voyeuristic stage. Mies’ search for
“the ultimate in universality, the ultimate in precision and
polish, the ultimate in crystallization of an idea” led him
to sacrifice the needs of his client. According to Peter Blake’s
1960 Mies van der Rohe: Architecture and Structure, “Mies’ insistence
upon an all-glass skin was no arbitrary defiance of ‘practicality’;
it was an attempt to arrive at an absolutely clear, visual separation
of structure and non-structure” (Blake 88). Without consideration
for her defined role in society, Mies so-called “crystals amidst
the luxuriance of nature” failed to satisfy Edith Farnsworth’s
domestic needs (Blaser 102).
The Farnsworth House removed traditional barriers between the
public and private sphere (Figure 4). Conventional housing plans
contain a clear division between public space for receiving
and entertaining guests, and private space for sleeping, dressing
and relaxing. The Farnsworth House did not allow for a division
between the private and public realms that was becoming increase
important to women in the 1950s.4 Bauhaus designs annihilated
the middle ground and “negotiating the space between buildings
and inhabitants, between social and individual identity, between
public and private, between objective and subjective culture,
and between male and female identities” (Herck 139-140). The
characteristically “Miesian” Farnsworth House, with its “elimination
of partition walls so that a house tend to be one public room
with open areas for sleeping, eating, playing, etc,” represents
what House Beautiful described as “The Threat to the Next America”
(Gordon 66-67).
In April 1953, Elizabeth Gordon, editor of House Beautiful,
stated: “I have decided to speak up” (Gordon 126). After an
interview with Edith Farnsworth, Gordon called for an end of
the International Style in the “bluntest terms” (Gordon 126).
She wrote:
Something is rotten in the state of design – and it is spoiling
some of our best efforts in modern living. After watching it
for several years, after meeting it with silence, House Beautiful
has decided to speak out and appeal to your common sense, because
it is common sense that is mostly under attack. Two ways of
life stretch before us. One leads to the richness of variety,
to comfort and beauty. The other, the one we want fully to expose
to you, retreats to poverty and unlivabilty. Worst of all, it
contains a threat of cultural dictatorship. (Gordon 127)
Appealing to American fears of communism and atomic warfare,
Gordon described International Style architects such as Mies
and Le Corbusier, followers of the so-called “Cult of Austerity”
and practitioners of the “clinical look,” in the darkest and
harshest terms (Gordon 127). She claimed that these architects
“are all trying to sell the idea that ‘less is more,’ both as
a criterion for design, and as a basis for judgment of the good
life” when in reality, “we know that less is not more. It is
simply less!” (Gordon 127,130). In Gordon’s proclamation against
Bauhaus architecture she remains sympathetic to Edith Farnsworth.5
Following a series of lawsuits between Mies and Farnsworth,
beginning in 1951 and settling in Mies favor in 1953, Farnsworth
stated in her interview with Elizabeth Gordon of House Beautiful:
Something should be said and done about such architecture as
this or there will be no future for architecture… I thought
you could animate a predetermined, classic form like this with
your own presence. I wanted to do something ‘meaningful,’ and
all I got was this glib, false sophistication. (Farnsworth 88)
After living in her Mies masterwork for twenty years, Edith
Farnsworth finally vacated the house in 1971.
Conclusion: A Utopian School Fundamentally Opposed to the Training
of Women as Architects
The Bauhaus movement hoped to embrace “architecture, sculpture
and painting in one unity and will rise one day toward heaven
from the hands of millions of workers like a crystal symbol
of a new faith” (Gropius 1). Yet, in contradiction with Gropius’
utopian vision, the creation of a female curriculum at the Bauhaus
school trained women for careers as mothers and wives. Despite
the declarations by Walter Gropius, Bauhaus propaganda, and
contemporary reports of equality and harmony, the school was
forced to “temper idealism with realism” by following contemporary
gender mores in their curriculum (Whitford 239). Conflicting
with the school’s progressive philosophies, the repressed female
Bauhaus students were forced to participate in the so-called
“myth of emancipation” (Baumhoff 67).
The exclusion of women from the Architecture Workshop, believing
female architectural training to be impractical, had a profound
effect on the housing plans of the school. Perceived as characteristically
cold, unwelcoming, and unpractical, Bauhaus domestic designs
failed to account for the role of women as wives and mothers
in traditional German society. While training students to focus
on interior design and preparing them for their societal roles,
the Bauhaus was unable to design spaces for multi-gendered living.
Understanding the bourgeois concept of the home as an oppressive
power and an immobilizing factor of human existence, Bauhaus
architects moved beyond the field of architecture, intruding
and intervening in the daily practices of the inhabitant. In
their search for functional utopian spaces for the “new man,”
architects from the Bauhaus, overlooked the post-war woman’s
desire for privacy and gemutlichket.
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