Bauhaus Roots at IIT: A Heritage of Innovation and Experimentation
Introduction
Nearly a century ago, designers, artists, and architects took up the challenge of a poor economy, a war-torn continent, and a disillusioned public by creating a radical new school called the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany. They aimed to build a better future by melding art and craft, employing creative problem solving, working in interdisciplinary teams, and focusing on discovering and experimenting with applications for the newest materials and technology. The result: a school whose ideas changed education, production, architecture, and design the world over.
Two individuals, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and László Moholy-Nagy, participated in and influenced the Bauhaus's impact on art, design, and architecture. They also had a major influence on the development of today's Illinois Institute of Technology—through their creation of educational programs that shaped IIT’s College of Architecture and Institute of Design.
College of Architecture
In 1938, Armour Institute of Technology engaged German born-architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) to take over the leadership of its architectural program. In doing so, the school hoped to transform its traditional architectural program into one of international stature and innovation.
The selection of Mies as chair of the school's Department of Architecture was a logical choice for achieving this goal; at that time, Mies had already achieved international recognition as one of the leading figures of modern architecture. Mies also had an established reputation in the field of architectural education, having been affiliated with the famed Bauhaus school of design in Germany. He served as director of the Bauhaus from 1930 until 1933, when political pressures forced its closing.
Relocating to Chicago in 1938, Mies reshaped the architectural curriculum of Armour Institute along similar lines to that of the Bauhaus, developing a disciplined curriculum carried out in a cooperative environment that encouraged interaction between students and the faculty, comprised of professionals from a wide variety of design disciplines.
The curriculum was comprised of progressive, Bauhaus-inspired courses on the visual and tactile characteristics of materials, as well as more fundamental classes on drawing and construction techniques. Beginning students were first educated in the essential characteristics of materials and construction, providing a sound foundation in how a building is built and the nature and capabilities of materials. Only when students fully grasped the basic concepts were they gradually advanced into applying these principles into actual building design.
Much of the Mies-inspired innovative curriculum remains in place today, as does the modern campus of IIT, which includes 18 buildings Mies designed. The most famous is S. R. Crown Hall, home of the College of Architecture and a symbol of Mies' extraordinary vision and creativity.
Institute of Design
In 1937, Walter Paepcke, chair of the Container Corporation of America, invited László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) to come to Chicago to be the director of the New Bauhaus, to recreate the energy of the shuttered German counterpart. According to Wikipedia, Moholy-Nagy had joined the German Bauhaus in 1923 as the instructor of the preliminary course that led the school to abandon its expressionistic leanings and embrace its mission to promote design and industrial integration.
Moholy-Nagy became proficient in the fields of photography, typography, sculpture, painting, printmaking, and industrial design. He coined the term New Vision to characterize his belief that photography could introduce a whole new way of seeing the world and became a leading experimenter in both photographic technology, photomontage, and photograms—images created by laying objects on light-sensitive paper.
Moholy-Nagy brought this creativity and his European experiences to the educational programming of the New Bauhaus, but the school lost its financial backing after only a year and closed. Paepcke, however, continued his support, and the school reopened as the School of Design in 1939, becoming the Institute of Design in 1944.
Moholy-Nagy died of leukemia in 1946, but the Institute of Design stayed alive and became part of IlT in 1949. Moholy-Nagy's influence was strongly felt even after his death, as faculty and students of the Institute of Design led the development of post-war commercial photography. The Institute of Design has evolved into one of the nation’s leading educational centers for innovation and human-centered design today.