Functional beauty

Founded in Weimar in 1919, the Bauhaus school developed a revolutionary approach that fused fine art with craftsmanship and engineering in everything from architecture to furniture, typography, and even theater. Originally headed by Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus counted among its members artists and architects such as Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, La"szlo" Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Breuer. In 1930 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe took over as the leader, but soon after, in 1933, the Nazi government shut down the school. During its fourteen years of existence, Bauhaus managed to change the faces of art, architecture, and industrial design forever and is still hugely influential today.

About the Series:
Every book in TASCHEN"s Basic Architecture Series features:

* approximately 120 images, including photographs, sketches, drawings, and floor plans
* introductory essays exploring the architect"s life and work, touching on family and background as well as collaborations with other architects
* the most important works presented in chronological order, with descriptions of client and/or architect wishes as well as construction problems and resolutions
* an appendix including a list of complete or selected works, biography, bibliography and a map indicating the locations of the architect"s most famous buildings



About the author:
Magdalena Droste studied art history and literature in Aachen and Marburg. She has worked at the Bauhaus Archiv in Berlin since 1980. She has contributed to numerous exhibitions and publications an Bauhaus artists and has also written a number of essays on the furniture and textile workshops at the Bauhaus and on arts and crafts as a woman"s profession.