The legacy
The journey of Bauhaus movement was unique. It has been so revolutionary, disruptive and powerful in the history of the art that for contemporary people at time was impossible to understand the real value. Probably one reason was that It was not only about art. In the first months of 1900, people was judging with art eye glasses, something that was a revolution for the whole society.
Think about Industrial design, architecture, democratization of beauty, interaction between technology and daily life, educational approach and multidisciplinary mindset… all those things were touched by the Bahuaus influence. And today its legacy is more important than we expect.
Why the Bahuaus origins are important?
It’s difficult to reshape was Groepius thinking in first months of 1919. When the Bahuaus project born. What’s the aspirantions? The objectives? The economic implications… anyway we can surely note today the extraordinary openess of his approach. We were seeing something related to the art with a deep idea of democratised access.. And that’s not common for that period.
The multidisciplinary and equal approach
Nearly 40 years later, Norbert Wiener pioneered a new systemic approach to a multidisciplinary mindset with “Cybernetics”. However, Bauhaus had previously introduced this concept in the field, particularly within an expanded art context. Truthfully, the idea of innovating through competence matching has been around since the Renaissance. Yet, it was the first time the concept of contamination was extended from “competences value” to “differences value”. Being open implied social, economic, and political inclusivity. This marked the inception of the first concrete (and unconscious) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) laboratory.
The power of influence with beauty
A new approach to the equality of competencies and social extractions needed a redesign of the concept of beauty. Traditionally, beauty was closely associated with the sublime, and art had to be exclusive and unique. However, Bauhaus reshaped beauty into something accessible to everyone.
Beauty was no longer just for contemplation, but stated to serve our daily life. All the objects we use could be enhanced through design, improving our lives and cultural awareness. Consider a typical contemporary product design department in a large corporation – the mindset appears quite similar, doesn’t it?
A new idea of disruption
What always fascinated me about Bauhaus was the concept of assembling things together. Its step-by-step approach to practical tasks, coupled with a comprehensive vision, exemplifies the mindset I seek in contemporary founders. I believe the innovation process as we know it today began with a shift from a “unique author creation” to a “multidisciplinary group that solves problems”. We can see a significant contribution from Bauhaus in this transformation.