ls. ]previous[ ]next[ Architecturearchitecture When Walter Gropius resigned as the head of the Bauhaus in 1930, Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe (1886-1969) became its director, moving it to Berlin before political pressures forced it to close in 1933. In his architecture and furniture he made a clear and elegant statement of the International Style, so much so that his work had enormous influence on modern architecture. Taking his motto "less is more" and calling his architecture "skin and bones," his aesthetic was already fully formed in the model for a glass skyscraper office building he concieved in 1921. Working with glass provided him with new freedom and many new possiblities. In the glass model, three irreguarly shaped towers flow outward from a central court. The perimeter walls are wholly transparent, the regular horizontal patterning of the cantilevered floor panes and their thin vertical supporting elements. The weblike delicacy of the lines of the glass model, its radiance, and the illusion of movement created by reflection and by light changes seen through it prefigure many of the glass skyscrapers of major cities throughout the world. ]previous[ ]next[ Architecturearchitecture ]g a l l e r y[ It was clear from Gropius's Manifesto that the ultimate aim of the Bauhaus was architecture; the very name Bauhaus suggests it most strongly. Each of the school's three directors, Gropius, Meyer and Van Der Rohe, were above all an architect and, rightly or wrongly, the Bauhaus has become strongly identified with the architectural approach that has variously been called Modernism, The Modern Movement or the International Style. The debate surrounding Modernism or the new architecture was carried on in terms heavy with moral conotations: truth, purity and honesty. Democracy even entered into it with the attempt to suppress the predominance of one face of the building in favor of buildings that would only be appreciated by walking around or thr...
