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Iconic creations of Bauhaus design, 100 years on

As Bauhaus, the most influential design school of the 20th century, marks its 100th birthday, examples of its keep-it-simple elegance can still be found across the globe.

Iconic creations of Bauhaus design, 100 years on
Photo: DPA

The movement, based on the “form follows function” principle, revolutionised the practices of artists and artisans during 14 short years of existence before Adolf Hitler ran it out of Germany.

In sending its disciples including Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer into exile abroad, the Nazis ironically ensured the school's ideas would germinate the world over.

Here are some of the best-known creations by Bauhaus's daring designers that have transformed the way we see the world:

'White City' of Tel Aviv


Photo:DPA

Bauhaus may be best known for its architecture and no city in the world has a larger collection of buildings in its style than Tel Aviv, where it is designated as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site.

Designed from the 1930s by German Jewish architects fleeing the Nazis, the more than 4,000 remaining “White City” apartment buildings — named for their pearly facades — became affordable housing for new arrivals.

But unlike their predecessors built for the German climate, the Tel Aviv constructions used less glass and added balconies that could capture cool breezes off the Mediterranean to help their residents beat the heat.

Breuer chair


Photo: DPA

The iconic low-slung “Wassily Chair” was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1926 and seen as revolutionary at the time for its use of bent tubular steel and leather.

It is still a huge hit in the design world although it was not, as often thought, named for the Russian abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky, another Bauhaus acolyte and a friend of Breuer's.

It was only in the 1980s, when the chair was being copied by other designers, that it was dubbed the “Wassily Chair” for marketing reasons.

Brandt teapot


Photo: DPA

The Bauhaus was aesthetically radical but also had a reformist vision for society during its rocky tenure in Germany between the world wars.

It was one of the first technical schools to admit women and had rough gender parity among its student body in Weimar, where the university still teaches Bauhaus principles on the historic campus.

While Gropius tried to consign women to weaving and other traditionally “feminine” disciplines, a few trailblazers such as Marianne Brandt also worked in heavier materials.

Her 1924 metal teapot, with an intelligently placed spout for easier pouring, had a giant impact for its whimsically angular geometry exuding a sense of harmony.

A household object once stored in cupboards became a design milestone destined for modern art museums.

Wagenfeld lamp


Photo: DPA

The simple white hemispheric lamp on a glass cylinder and base is a prime example of the smooth, clean lines for which Bauhaus is known.

Created in the 1924 by Wilhelm Wagenfeld, the desktop masterpiece became a de rigueur bureau appointment, including in Gropius's own office in Weimar.

Bauhaus critics have noted that as time has passed, the school's streamlined, sometimes sterile look has strayed far from its egalitarian origins to become an elitist status symbol.

Even copies of the Wagenfeld lamp now run upwards of 400 euros.

READ ALSO: How Bauhaus designed the world as we know it

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ARCHITECTURE

Futuristic Gehry tower opens in World Heritage Arles

Rising high beyond an ancient Roman arena in Arles, a tall, twisted tower created by Frank Gehry shimmers in the sun, the latest futuristic addition to this southern French city known for its World Heritage sites.

Futuristic Gehry tower opens in World Heritage Arles
Gehry's Luma Tower opens in Arles, France. Photo: H I / Pixabay

The tower, which opens to the public on Saturday, is the flagship attraction of a new “creative campus” conceived by the Swiss Luma arts foundation that wants to offer artists a space to create, collaborate and showcase their work.

Gehry, the 92-year-old brain behind Bilbao’s Guggenheim museum and Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall, wrapped 11,000 stainless steel panels around his tower above a huge glass round base.

It will house contemporary art exhibitions, a library, and offices, while the Luma Arles campus as a whole will host conferences and live performances.

From a distance, the structure reflects the changing lights of this town that inspired Van Gogh, capturing the whiteness of the limestone Alpilles mountain range nearby which glows a fierce orange when the sun sets.

Mustapha Bouhayati, the head of Luma Arles, says the town is no stranger to
imposing monuments; its ancient Roman arena and theatre have long drawn the
crowds.

The tower is just the latest addition, he says. “We’re building the heritage of tomorrow.”

Luma Arles spreads out over a huge former industrial wasteland.

Maja Hoffmann, a Swiss patron of the arts who created the foundation, says
the site took seven years to build and many more years to conceive.

Maja Hoffmann, founder and president of the Luma Foundation. Photo: Pascal GUYOT / AFP

Aside from the tower, Luma Arles also has exhibition and performance spaces in former industrial buildings, a phosphorescent skatepark created by South Korean artist Koo Jeong A and a sprawling public park conceived by Belgian landscape architect Bas Smets.

‘Arles chose me’

The wealthy great-granddaughter of a founder of Swiss drug giant Roche, Hoffmann has for years been involved in the world of contemporary art, like her grandmother before her.

A documentary producer and arts collector, she owns photos by Annie Leibovitz and Diane Arbus and says she hung out with Jean-Michel Basquiat in New York.

Her foundation’s stated aim is to promote artists and their work, with a special interest in environmental issues, human rights, education and culture.

She refuses to answer a question on how much the project in Arles cost. But as to why she chose the 53,000-strong town, Hoffmann responds: “I did not choose Arles, Arles chose me.”

She moved there as a baby when her father Luc Hoffmann, who co-founded WWF,
created a reserve to preserve the biodiversity of the Camargue, a region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Rhone river delta known for its pink flamingos.

The tower reflects that, with Camargue salt used as mural panels and the
delta’s algae as textile dye.

Hoffmann says she wants her project to attract more visitors in the winter, in a town where nearly a quarter of the population lives under the poverty line.

Some 190 people will be working at the Luma project over the summer, Bouhayati says, adding that Hoffman has created an “ecosystem for creation”.

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