Bauhaus

A Lesson in Structure from an Historic Center of Excellence

Centers of Excellence (CoE) have been around a good long time. They began in academia and the arts, but have become a pervasive buzzword in the corporate world. Much has been made of their necessity in the ‘new’ digital age. Like most other claims of urgency and recency, this has been vastly overplayed — possibly at the cost of its own potential success.

But then CoEs are nothing, if not hype. Whether all businesses in the technology space need one or just how great any of the existing centers truly are, it is all subjective and open to debate — much like history. And so, let’s look at a little history of one of the world’s early CoEs — Bauhaus.

Weimar — 1919

While the German government was busy making a mess of things with the creation of the Weimar Republic, Walter Gropius was creating something quite special. Well, as is often the case, Gropius didn’t really create Bauhaus so much as transform it. Prior to Gropius, the Hochschule or academy had focused on visual arts since it inception a decade earlier. That in turn had been built of three separate schools established in 1860.

Bauhaus or “house of building” would adopt Gropius’ architectural roots, but its link to visual design would remain as well. Bauhaus became a veritable whose who of design schools, with its amazing list of students and instructors.

The center would shortly issue a set of statutes and its own constitution. Teachers were known as masters, students would become apprentices or journeymen. Bauhaus would serve as an example of excellence in everything from sculpture to bookbinding, graphic design to furniture construction.

Nazis

Weimar had once been the capital city of Thuringia. In 1924, the National Socialists arrived, just one year later Bauhaus was chased away. Bauhaus would move to Dessau for the next seven years. In 1931, the Nazis would again close the Dessau location pushing Bauhaus to Berlin for a brief period before they finally closed it in dramatic fashion in 1933. Papers please!

So why do Nazi’s hate Centers of Excellence? Why target one of the most famous design houses of the time, one at the forefront of industialization and production? Oddly, because the integration of art (theory) and craft (application) was viewed as a Communist (Jewish) ideal. Essentially, they had the wrong intellectual association. This coupled with their Modernist or Cosmopolitan style, which ran counter to the Germany’s attempts to recapture their heritage, left them an easy and highly symbolic target.

Legacy

Bauhaus inspired an English punk band in the late 70’s and early 80’s. In 1996, Bauhaus University would be reestablished at the original site in Weimar. In 2000, the White City (Tel Aviv) would open the Bauhaus Center. Tel Aviv being the city where many former Bauhaus designers fled, was a natural beneficiary and a fitting new home in light of Bauhaus’ German persecution.

Bauhaus has also given rise to a myriad of websites full of stories, examples, lists, and other information. Here is one of many available:

A Lesson In Structure

It may be conjecture or it may be bitter irony, but one can attribute the demise of Bauhaus to its structure. Like many Centers of Excellence, Bauhaus was funded by a larger organization, namely the German government. As such, it was dependent on an entity with entirely different goals and intentions than its own.

Many corporate CoE suffer this same fate. Their corporate parents seem like a boon when P&Ls are kind and growth is easy. Unfortunately, as tides turn, the disconnect in the goals of the CoE and the goals of the organization make them an easy (and sometimes symbolic) target. Although we often color the Nazi’s to be evil maniacal geniuses, they were really only evil. Their tactics and ideas were immensely human, imperfect, and natural (for a bunch of really evil dudes).

Had the Bauhaus only further embraced the applied side of their discipline, had they done more to capitalize on their art and work, had then been self-funded — the world may have benefited from 60 more years of cutting edge design and progress. But, as often the case, they were only human…

Thanks for reading!