Bauhaus World, the 100th Anniversary of Germany’s Legendary Art

Above: Architecture, art and design - 100 years of the Bauhaus (1/3)Architecture, art and design - 100 years of the Bauhaus (1/3)

Watch Bauhaus World, a Free Documentary

This April 1st marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus, the German art school that, though short-lived, launched an entire design movement with a stark, functional aesthetic all its own. 

Exploring the legacy of this iconic German institution, our film crew traveled the world, meeting architects, artists, urban planners, doers and dreamers. Do the Bauhaus’s social ideals and design principles still shape how we live today?

New approaches to education and training, architecture, painting, dance and design were explored and developed at the Bauhaus. Its founder and director Walter Gropius attracted the leading creative figures of the era, including Hannes Meyer, Mies van der Rohe, Lyonel Feininger, Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, Anni Albers, Josef Albers and Gunta Stölzl. Today, Bauhaus is considered the birthplace of Modernism and has become a byword for sleek, functional design. Founded in Weimar in 1919, the Bauhaus school moved to Dessau in 1925 and then to Berlin, where it was forced to shut in 1933 after Hitler seized power. Most of its artists, architects and visionaries emigrated, fanning out and spreading the Bauhaus doctrine around the world.

Architecture, art and design - 100 years of the Bauhaus (2/3)Architecture, art and design - 100 years of the Bauhaus (2/3)

Architecture, art and design - 100 years of the Bauhaus (3/3)Architecture, art and design - 100 years of the Bauhaus (3/3)

Video Source: DW Documentary