Survey 9

by | Dec 9, 2020 | IDEA 141

The Bauhaus

In 1919, the Bauhaus in Germany was founded by architect Walter Gropius. The goal of the school was to bring all types of art together and embrace mass production, as well as the new materials of the time. Simplicity of form and only adding things that were essential to the design, and that art should meet the needs of society were their ideals, some of the only similarities between the vast variety of works and styles to come out of the bauhaus

Design

 

The Bauhaus wanted to bring art and industrialization together and into everyday life. They intended to reject and reinterpret the ideas of design and art at the time and show it can be part of everyday life. They worked on everyday items like chairs, tables, clothing, and textiles so that the general populace could use them and have a masterfully crafted piece of design in their home. Due to this ease of access the style spread easily to the general public and inspired many other movements and styles. The design of the Bauhaus is characterized by their bold primary colours, functionality, and geometric shapes- these exemplifying the ideas of simplicity in form.

Bauhaus logo

https://abduzeedo.com/bauhaus-influence

Bauhaus Dessau

https://www.floornature.com/100-years-bauhaus-14386/

 

Architecture

 

Architecture in the Bauhaus and coming out of the school followed the same ideals of function and bringing design into the modern industrial age. As with their furniture, posters and other designs, everything in the architecture had to have a purpose, no ornaments or additions just because it looked good. Most buildings were made of concrete, glass, and steel so they could celebrate the new materials and also be built to last. Large walls of glass, use of simple geometric forms, asymmetry, and open floor plans were extremely common in these buildings as well as truth to materials (the celebration of the building material through leaving it exposed.). This style greatly inspired American architecture later on after the closing of the Bauhaus in 1933.

Sources

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bauh/hd_bauh.htm

Bauhaus: How the Avant-Garde Movement Transformed Modern Art

The bauhaus (book)- whitford

The bauhaus reassessed(book)- Gillian naylor

Exhibit Artifact

by | Nov 18, 2020 | IDEA 141

The Breuer Lattice chair

This project was super open-ended so I had to think for a while about my topic. In the end, I decided on something to do with the Bauhaus and Marcel Breuer has interested me since I saw his works. Most of his furniture uses steel so I had to find one that I would be able to do and the lattice chair worked great. I went for a roughly 1/3 scale model using wood and paper and used my extremely limited woodworking knowledge to put it together. the staging was my desk and a book for the black part to emulate how the furniture was shown off at the time.  I also made my description in the Bauhaus style and tried to get it to blend into the white wall to embrace the pristine modern ideas. Overall I feel I did pretty well in following the brief and creating my object and spread while also having a fun time doing it. I did give myself a big challenge so it’s not perfect but I still would give myself an 8.5-9/10.

Survey 6

by | Nov 4, 2020 | IDEA 141

The Vienna Secession

“To every age its art, and to every art its freedom”

The Vienna Secession was a group founded by Austrian artists in 1897. initially it has 50 members including such designers and artists as: Josef Hoffman, Koloman Moser, Otto Wagner, Gustav Klimt, and Wilhelm Bernatzik

 

Culture

The idea of the group was to go against the extremely conservative culture in the arts and design prevalent in Austria at the time and do something new. their plan was to exchange ideas with countries and areas outside Austria and no longer be rooted in historical art. they have coined the Austrian Art Nouveau and would go on to help pave the way to expressionism. This movement helped break Austria out of the artistic rut they were in and brought not only just the secessionists but many artistic movements from around the world to the public eye.

 

Architecture

pictured here is the Secession building by Joseph Maia Olbrich

It was made as the headquarters for the group and shows off their ideas on architecture perfectly. It is considered the first permanent exhibition space for contemporary art. The building would (and still does) show off a wide array of paintings, sculptures, architecture, and graphic design pieces that show off the secession ideas. Inspired by neoclassicism, The secession architecture had simplicity in architecture and focused on the shape. But as they did not look to history for their style they went for a more art nouveau style of extreme levels of detail and strong use of organic ornamental detail. The massive floral dome on top of the Secession building shows off this embellishment perfectly as well as the whiplash designs dotting the facade.

Sources

https://www.theartstory.org/movement/vienna-secession/

https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/vienna-secession

Vienna Secession

A HISTORY

Typography Zine!

by | Oct 26, 2020 | IDEA 141

I did my zine on blackletter and how it changed and was used throughout history. blackletter has many forms and evolved over time so I decided to have my titles and use of blackletter follow the time period I was talking about as best I could. For my title, I decided to put the title in the typesetter and over top of the boxes of extra letters as this is how it would have been printed when it was first used in print. I decided not to go for too much colour as for a good portion of blackletters history it would have been used purely black and white or with one accent colour. overall I feel I worked hard, spent a long time thinking and researching for this project and came out of it with a project I am very happy with and a lot more knowledge on something I was interested in. I would give myself an 8.5-9/10 as I followed the brief to the best of my abilities and made something I feel is unique.

Mood board

by | Oct 13, 2020 | IDEA 141

My mood board experience

for my mood board, I was tasked with writing about events from 1925-1930 so I chose- the Bauhaus, Jan Tshichold, and the Exposition des arts decoratifs. I decided on these topics as they all were largely influential to the design and art world and also influenced people and things outside their scope. This project I found rather difficult as Invision didn’t cooperate a lot of the time and work would be lost sometimes when I closed or refreshed the page. I also found moving images around to be crazy frustrating as it wouldn’t do as expected and instead would scramble all the ones you weren’t trying to move. Overall I feel I tried my best and spent a long time on this project so I would give myself a 7.5/10

Survey 1

by | Sep 30, 2020 | IDEA 141

Babylon 1792-1750 Geopolitics & Typography

Babylon, a small town along the Euphrates river, started out with not too much going for it but was destined for great things. This small city state located in modern day Iraq was largely overshadowed by larger states like Assyria, stayed mostly to itself until a ruler with ambition and ideas was sworn in. This ruler, Hammurabi, was to change the tide for this town and leave a lasting legacy.

Geopolitics

Hammurabi ruled from 1792 B.C. till 1750 B.C. and made the most of his time as king. He worked hard to build Babylon into a far larger city and set on a conquest of the surrounding lands, eventually taking over most of lower Mesopotamia and creating the empire of Babylonia. This expansion allowed culture to grow and change significantly and also allowed for more precious materials to be used in the arts among other things. Due to the conquest of Hammurabi, Babylon became the “holy city’ and cultural capital of the empire. after doing all this for the small town of Babylon, Hammurabi was to do one final thing for his empire that would put his name down in history- the code of Hammurabi! 

typography

During Hammurabi’s reign he put together a set of 282 laws which he had inscribed on a large block of diorite. Hammurabi’s code is one of the earliest forms of law and one of the longest deciphered writings discovered to date. This code went over such things as fraud, slavery, theft, trade and various other subjects that related to both crime and home life.  This code along with his major building projects allowed Babylon to thrive and go through massive cultural changes and eventually take over the surrounding area and become the empire of Babylonia. After taking over the surrounding states and towns he would give smaller clay tablets with the rules inscribed to the annexed cities to keep the laws uniform across his empire. It is also known now that most towns had a library as they believe both men and women should be educated in order to be prosperous. Many of these texts were translated from sumerian and many of these works still exist today 

 

Bibliography

History.com Editors. “Babylonia.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2 Feb. 2018, www.history.com/topics/ancient-middle-east/babylonia.

“Babylonia.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Sept. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonia.

“Babylon.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 29 Sept. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon.

“Code of Hammurabi.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Sept. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi.