The Bauhaus officially opened as a new state school intended to unite fine and applied arts through workshop-based training—an early institutional expression of Gropius’s goal to reconnect design education with making and building.
Gropius published the Bauhaus Manifesto (“Program of the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar”), arguing for a reform of artistic work grounded in craft and oriented toward the building as a unifying goal for the arts—an early curricular and ideological anchor for the school.
Walter Gropius signed his contract as director in Weimar and formally merged the former Academy of Fine Arts with the dissolved School of Arts and Crafts, creating the State Bauhaus in Weimar—the institutional basis for the Bauhaus program.
Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer designed Sommerfeld House in Berlin; the Bauhaus workshops contributed extensively to interiors and fittings. The project became a prominent early demonstration of Bauhaus collaboration across crafts under Gropius’s direction.
Johannes Itten devised the preliminary course (Vorkurs) for the Bauhaus, establishing foundational exercises in materials, form, and color that became central to Bauhaus pedagogy and shaped how students entered workshop training.
In a policy statement circulated among Bauhaus masters, Gropius pushed the school toward collaboration with industry and model-making for wider production—an important step in reshaping curriculum and workshop goals beyond the initial craft-emphasis of 1919.
László Moholy-Nagy joined the Bauhaus and took over from Johannes Itten, helping move teaching and workshop culture away from earlier expressionist tendencies and toward experimental modern media and design aligned with industrial production.
The first major Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar showcased teaching and workshop outputs and featured Haus am Horn, a full-scale prototype dwelling designed by Georg Muche and realized with Bauhaus workshops—demonstrating the school’s ambition to integrate architecture, interiors, and objects.
During Bauhaus Week associated with the 1923 exhibition, Gropius publicly framed the school’s evolving stance as a synthesis of artistic invention with modern production—often summarized as “Art and Technology: A New Unity.”
In Dessau, Gropius’s office designed a new school complex (later known as Bauhaus Dessau) integrating workshops, teaching spaces, administration, and student studios—turning pedagogical goals into an architectural program.
Commissioned by the city of Dessau, the Masters’ Houses designed by Gropius were built as residences and demonstration projects for Bauhaus faculty, embodying rational planning and modern living concepts closely tied to the school’s teaching and public image.
Escalating political hostility and funding cuts in Thuringia compelled the Bauhaus to relocate from Weimar; the move set the stage for a more institutionally supported phase in Dessau, where Gropius could pursue larger architectural and production-oriented ambitions.
The Bauhaus building in Dessau—designed by Gropius—was officially opened, providing purpose-built facilities that enabled the school to integrate workshops, teaching, and student accommodation in a single modern complex often described as a built statement of its aims.
An architecture department was formally established (after earlier years in which architecture was not a standalone department). This institutional step reinforced the Bauhaus’s stated focus on building and provided a clearer curricular structure for architectural training.
Walter Gropius resigned as director, ending his leadership of the Bauhaus after its foundational Weimar phase and its early institutional consolidation in Dessau; the directorship transitioned to Hannes Meyer shortly thereafter.
Walter Gropius at the Bauhaus: founding, curriculum, and projects (1919–1928)
