7 ms·

What Bauhaus ideas do you hate?

atoav 5y ago
Not to answer for somebody else, but a lot of the Bauhaus design was very modern and minimalist. Despite this it aimed to be more functional than what existed before (queue the Bauhaus kitchen). After all they had to defend their "modernist nonsense" back then for sure — that meant only looking modern didn't cut it. Many designers and architects that copied the Bauhaus style didn't copy the Bauhaus functionality, thus creating something that looks modern, but is actually worse in terms of functionality than what existed before. One can't really blame the Bauhaus for this tho. Style will always be easier to copy than style + functionality
- ivan_gammel 5y ago
  That’s not Bauhaus fault. It happened all the time when artists and builders focused on style and completely forgot about function, but only really good artifacts usually survive. My favorite example is Vasa, the Swedish warship that sunk at the start of her maiden voyage. The ship was gorgeous, but it could not sail.
  - eternityforest 5y ago
    The Bauhaus kind of discourages things that are easy to copy in functionality though. It's easy(In large quantities) to make an empty box with a tiny class D PCB in it, and add some LED fake vacuum tubes and digital correction for your crappy speaker. Try to make a real tube amp and you might need actual quality parts and design to sound as good. You might be able to make something better than the fake version, but just matching the fake will probably cost more. When form and function are the same, it's almost like a closed form equation. There's not as many knobs to turn, so you're relying on the ones you have to be high quality. You can't have much fault tolerance in a system that believes making stuff that still works when faulty is a type of lying.
    - ivan_gammel 5y ago
      > The Bauhaus kind of discourages things that are easy to copy in functionality though Why do you think so? The whole idea of this school was to make things scalable while preserving aesthetics. It’s not yet IKEA, but it is already not Jugendstil.
    - atoav 5y ago
      I think there is a chance you forgot to perceive the Bauhaus within it's historical context. The Bauhaus kitchen I mentioned absolutly was an improvement in terms of both raw usability and technological quality compared to the typical German kitchen that was common back in that day. Some of that was of course achieved on the back of more modern kitchen devices and electricity, but most of it was just thinking about where to put things, how they are interacted with in daily use and giving it an aesthetically pleasing form. The stated goal of e.g. that kitchen was to give the modern housewife more time by reducing unnecessary movements by clever design. This is why I don't really get the tube amp example. Tube amps (as nearly all other electrical devices have been buily more rugged and over engineered back in the day. The dynamic that lead to the degraded build quality has been mostly societal and systemic (customers not as willing/able to pay money for quality, mamifacturers being more interested in increasing shareholder value by replacing a high quality potentiometer with a cheap membrane button while calling it progress). This is not progress it is the 20th century equivalent of a babylonian merchant selling low quality grain in 1750 BC [0] or in other words: somebody tries to get rich by selling low quality stuff. The design follows the market here — most designers I know would die for a company that finally let's them design good stuff. Bauhaus designs were certainly not low quality stuff however. A Bauhaus stool certainly had different design parameters than e.g. a Jugendstil one, some of which also made it cheaper to manufacture, but cheaping out was not the goal here. It was to make design more accessible and more usable. A bass player today can make the legit choice that they want to get the best sound at the needed volume for the lightest possible weight. A quality tube bass amp weighs upwards 20 kg — without a speaker cabinet. Getting yourself a good class D amp is not a bad choice in today's time and age. Of course you could also compare a top of line tube amp to a cheap knockoff class D amp operated with an even cheaper switch mode PSU, but that would be like going from 200€ cheap laptop to an M1 macbook pro and declaring all non-apple laptops shit. There are really really good class D amps out there both in terms of sound and function. [0] See complaint: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir
  - atoav 5y ago
    As I said: > One can't really blame the Bauhaus for this tho.
jason-phillips 5y ago
> What Bauhaus ideas do you hate? Tubular steel, for one. Tubular steel is an abomination, especially in chairs. Modern chairs are typically terribly uncomfortable (the Eames lounge chair being one exception). This may speak to sibling's point regarding appropriation of style but with poor execution. A nice Windsor with wedged mortise-and-tenon construction is preferable. A good Windsor conveys a sense of movement, as though it's about to stand up and walk away; those lines lead to a particularly comfortable chair. Windsors will also last 300+ years....
- tokai 5y ago
  The Eames chair is not post-modern. You are mixing things together.
  - jason-phillips 5y ago
    Noted, corrected. Thank you.
eternityforest 5y ago
They really promoted "Truth to materials", and then went even farther and did designs that can only be done with very strong materials. That's a great way to make everything heavy, bulky, expensive, and resource intensive. A real modern high tech design gets it's reliability from the design. You can built it in a sloppy way with crap parts and it will work and look fine. Visually Bauhaus is fairly unforgiving. Dirt or scratches or just stuff that doesn't match the style really stands out in a room full of minimalist things, and even more so in modern minimalist design, and that's considered a feature rather than a bug. It kind of sneaks in some kind of subtle Edwardian "Show off your wealth by not doing anything only poor people need" stuff in the back door. On the opposite end is modern farmhouse, which is incredibly forgiving,because there's so many textured decorative elements. Rustic has a slight issue because it can also hide things you are looking for, and if you let it get to be a mess it won't "tell" you like Bauhaus will, it just feels nasty and oppressive without as being obvious why, but it has a lot of flexibility. Now we have things like resin infused wood and FEA, all kinds of new paints and coatings, and real automation, and it's no longer a guarantee that something fake will fall apart. Lots of things are basically cardboard with a thin layer of wood, and they use less material, are very light, and hold up surprisingly well.... except for the fact we throw them away anyway because we hate "cheap trash". Even the way we judge food could be seen as a Bauhaus-ism. The whole paleo/keto nonsense and the idea that people should eat vast quantities of meat all day fits right in with a mindset of substance and simplicity and truth to materials. But it doesn't appear to work as well as they claim. It makes sense as a reaction to some specific modern processed things, but it doesn't seem to be backed up by studies. Apple is kind of the ultimate modern reimagining of the Bauhaus. They're all about the tech that isn't there. As I see it an iPhone isn't meant to do anything at any time and get you out of any jam like a tricorder. I think it's meant to feel more like an appliance with a somewhat defined set of uses, and you're supposed to adapt to that, and that's part of the selling point, you're supposed to enjoy being the kind of person that can afford a closed ecosystem, and who is smart and capable and doesn't need a device to be compatible with everything. That's basically the same as a chair that can only work with really strong tubular steel, it's a limitation used to showcase the capabilities of something else(you). Bauhaus also ate a lot of other movements and really killed off a lot of diversity. Probably because it looks it's best without any other styles nearby.

Not to answer for somebody else, but a lot of the Bauhaus design was very modern and minimalist. Despite this it aimed to be more functional than what existed before (queue the Bauhaus kitchen). After all they had to defend their "modernist nonsense" back then for sure — that meant only looking modern didn't cut it. Many designers and architects that copied the Bauhaus style didn't copy the Bauhaus functionality, thus creating something that looks modern, but is actually worse in terms of functionality than what existed before. One can't really blame the Bauhaus for this tho. Style will always be easier to copy than style + functionality

ivan_gammel 5y ago
That’s not Bauhaus fault. It happened all the time when artists and builders focused on style and completely forgot about function, but only really good artifacts usually survive. My favorite example is Vasa, the Swedish warship that sunk at the start of her maiden voyage. The ship was gorgeous, but it could not sail.
- eternityforest 5y ago
  The Bauhaus kind of discourages things that are easy to copy in functionality though. It's easy(In large quantities) to make an empty box with a tiny class D PCB in it, and add some LED fake vacuum tubes and digital correction for your crappy speaker. Try to make a real tube amp and you might need actual quality parts and design to sound as good. You might be able to make something better than the fake version, but just matching the fake will probably cost more. When form and function are the same, it's almost like a closed form equation. There's not as many knobs to turn, so you're relying on the ones you have to be high quality. You can't have much fault tolerance in a system that believes making stuff that still works when faulty is a type of lying.
  - ivan_gammel 5y ago
    > The Bauhaus kind of discourages things that are easy to copy in functionality though Why do you think so? The whole idea of this school was to make things scalable while preserving aesthetics. It’s not yet IKEA, but it is already not Jugendstil.
  - atoav 5y ago
    I think there is a chance you forgot to perceive the Bauhaus within it's historical context. The Bauhaus kitchen I mentioned absolutly was an improvement in terms of both raw usability and technological quality compared to the typical German kitchen that was common back in that day. Some of that was of course achieved on the back of more modern kitchen devices and electricity, but most of it was just thinking about where to put things, how they are interacted with in daily use and giving it an aesthetically pleasing form. The stated goal of e.g. that kitchen was to give the modern housewife more time by reducing unnecessary movements by clever design. This is why I don't really get the tube amp example. Tube amps (as nearly all other electrical devices have been buily more rugged and over engineered back in the day. The dynamic that lead to the degraded build quality has been mostly societal and systemic (customers not as willing/able to pay money for quality, mamifacturers being more interested in increasing shareholder value by replacing a high quality potentiometer with a cheap membrane button while calling it progress). This is not progress it is the 20th century equivalent of a babylonian merchant selling low quality grain in 1750 BC [0] or in other words: somebody tries to get rich by selling low quality stuff. The design follows the market here — most designers I know would die for a company that finally let's them design good stuff. Bauhaus designs were certainly not low quality stuff however. A Bauhaus stool certainly had different design parameters than e.g. a Jugendstil one, some of which also made it cheaper to manufacture, but cheaping out was not the goal here. It was to make design more accessible and more usable. A bass player today can make the legit choice that they want to get the best sound at the needed volume for the lightest possible weight. A quality tube bass amp weighs upwards 20 kg — without a speaker cabinet. Getting yourself a good class D amp is not a bad choice in today's time and age. Of course you could also compare a top of line tube amp to a cheap knockoff class D amp operated with an even cheaper switch mode PSU, but that would be like going from 200€ cheap laptop to an M1 macbook pro and declaring all non-apple laptops shit. There are really really good class D amps out there both in terms of sound and function. [0] See complaint: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir
- atoav 5y ago
  As I said: > One can't really blame the Bauhaus for this tho.

jason-phillips 5y ago

> What Bauhaus ideas do you hate? Tubular steel, for one. Tubular steel is an abomination, especially in chairs. Modern chairs are typically terribly uncomfortable (the Eames lounge chair being one exception). This may speak to sibling's point regarding appropriation of style but with poor execution. A nice Windsor with wedged mortise-and-tenon construction is preferable. A good Windsor conveys a sense of movement, as though it's about to stand up and walk away; those lines lead to a particularly comfortable chair. Windsors will also last 300+ years....

tokai 5y ago
The Eames chair is not post-modern. You are mixing things together.
- jason-phillips 5y ago
  Noted, corrected. Thank you.

eternityforest 5y ago

They really promoted "Truth to materials", and then went even farther and did designs that can only be done with very strong materials. That's a great way to make everything heavy, bulky, expensive, and resource intensive. A real modern high tech design gets it's reliability from the design. You can built it in a sloppy way with crap parts and it will work and look fine. Visually Bauhaus is fairly unforgiving. Dirt or scratches or just stuff that doesn't match the style really stands out in a room full of minimalist things, and even more so in modern minimalist design, and that's considered a feature rather than a bug. It kind of sneaks in some kind of subtle Edwardian "Show off your wealth by not doing anything only poor people need" stuff in the back door. On the opposite end is modern farmhouse, which is incredibly forgiving,because there's so many textured decorative elements. Rustic has a slight issue because it can also hide things you are looking for, and if you let it get to be a mess it won't "tell" you like Bauhaus will, it just feels nasty and oppressive without as being obvious why, but it has a lot of flexibility. Now we have things like resin infused wood and FEA, all kinds of new paints and coatings, and real automation, and it's no longer a guarantee that something fake will fall apart. Lots of things are basically cardboard with a thin layer of wood, and they use less material, are very light, and hold up surprisingly well.... except for the fact we throw them away anyway because we hate "cheap trash". Even the way we judge food could be seen as a Bauhaus-ism. The whole paleo/keto nonsense and the idea that people should eat vast quantities of meat all day fits right in with a mindset of substance and simplicity and truth to materials. But it doesn't appear to work as well as they claim. It makes sense as a reaction to some specific modern processed things, but it doesn't seem to be backed up by studies. Apple is kind of the ultimate modern reimagining of the Bauhaus. They're all about the tech that isn't there. As I see it an iPhone isn't meant to do anything at any time and get you out of any jam like a tricorder. I think it's meant to feel more like an appliance with a somewhat defined set of uses, and you're supposed to adapt to that, and that's part of the selling point, you're supposed to enjoy being the kind of person that can afford a closed ecosystem, and who is smart and capable and doesn't need a device to be compatible with everything. That's basically the same as a chair that can only work with really strong tubular steel, it's a limitation used to showcase the capabilities of something else(you). Bauhaus also ate a lot of other movements and really killed off a lot of diversity. Probably because it looks it's best without any other styles nearby.