Help Me Understand The Bauhaus Philosophy

[Estycollector]

There is a connectivity between the German art school/philosophy and Lamy, noteably the 2000 model. While I understand that "form follows function" that the exterior should relate to the interior, how is this apply to writing tools and especially since the Lamy product shapes do vary widely?

 

Please share any thoughts on the philosophy of Bauhaus with examples if possible. Thank you in advance.

[gyasko]

According to Bauhaus designers, ather than precious metals, materials should be common industrial products, e.g., steel and Makrolon. The 2000 goes so far as to hide the gold in the nib under plating! That hiding of natural color seems like a departure, but it does allow the 2000 to have a typical Bauhaus neutral color scheme, black and white in this case. Also, the 2000s triangular nib expresses Bauhaus emphasis of squares, circles and triangles as building blocks to composition.

[Estycollector]

Thank you @Gyasko. So, if I understand, the gold in the nib is for function and not something to show off?

[gyasko]

Yes. You can make a nib out of steel or whatever, but there are reasonable arguments for making them in gold. Fountain pen nerds have hashed over those arguments many times so ill refrain from wading into that here.

[Karmachanic]

I regularly see questions here that can be easily answered with minimal effort. Searching the internet is not difficult. Ask and it will reply. Ones search engine of choice will tell one more than enough about Bauhause, and Gerd Müller too, if one asks.

 

My search engine of choice revealed: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/227631-lamy-2000-and-the-origins-of-lamy-design/

It took less than three minutes.

Edited June 27, 2020 by Karmachanic

[Estycollector]

I regularly see questions here that can be easily answered with minimal effort. Searching the internet is not difficult. Ask and it will reply. Ones search engine of choice will tell one more than enough about Bauhause, and Gerd Müller too, if one asks.

 

My search engine of choice revealed: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/227631-lamy-2000-and-the-origins-of-lamy-design/

It took less than three minutes.

 

Give me a break.

Edited June 27, 2020 by Estycollector

[torstar]

Bela Lugosi is still dead.

[Karmachanic]

 

Give me a break.

I gave you a link to a vast repository of Lamy 2000 information, including its design.

You're welcome.

[Estycollector]

I gave you a link to a vast repository of Lamy 2000 information, including its design.

You're welcome.

 

Your post was unnecessary, unhelpful, and rude. Carry on. I trust the rest of your day is better than the start.

Edited June 27, 2020 by Estycollector

[dennis_f]

The basic tenets were: everyone should have access to aesthetically pleasing design, and aesthetically pleasing doesn't need to be a function of expensive materials alone.

 

Good construction and good craftsmanship should be prioritized in the making of any product, and well-constructed and well-crafted products can be (aesthetically) pleasing simply by virtue of being well crafted.

 

Aesthetics are still important, and thus, there is an attempt by the designers to fashion products (whether they be as small as household products or as large as buildings) that are pleasing to the eye and to the body.

 

Pleasing to the body seemed to be more important to the bauhaus designers than "bling", as it were. Thus, the designers might design something as simple as a pen with a gentle curve, so that it fit better in the hand than an uncurved pen. Or, if you look at chairs designed by designers trained in the bauhaus tradition, you'll notice that many of them have sloped seats (instead of the ubiquitous flat seat we're all used to). The sloped seat was considered more in line with the shape the body takes when sitting down, and thus more comfortable.

 

This kind of approach lead to the axiom: form follows function. Form wouldn't just be arbitrary; it stemmed from some aspect of the function of the design.

 

Finally, because the idea was that everyone should have access to well-crafted products, a lot of thought went into (goes into) lowering production costs, which lead to minimalizing design flourishes. Thus, if you look at bauhaus appliances, or furniture, or buildings, a lot of extraneous details are pared away. If you imagine a fork, for example, a bauhaus fork would be plain and wouldn't include all of those little flourishes that you would see on victorian cutlery. Or a pen: imagine a Yard-o-led pen with all of it's intricate silver-work. A bauhaus pen would eiliminate that, and put effort instead into making sure that the details worked very well and were built to last a lifetime. Not that the Yard-o-led would not last a lifetime, but if you're looking to reduce costs, reducing flourishes are a good way to do it.

 

Production costs, thus, go into making sure the item is well crafted, well put-together, and longer lasting. And the cost of the product begins to reflect the degree of care that goes into ensuring that the product lasts, and serves the owner well, rather than just looking good.

 

The problem, then, for a lot of bauhaus designers, is to figure out how to make the product visually pleasing in the absence of the kinds of details most people find visually pleasing (like intricate flourishes on pens or cutlery, or adding fancy materials (gold vs plastic) just to make something look good). Appealing to the senses is one way to do it: make it visually interesting, or pleasing to the touch (by fashioning a subtle curve, or adding just the right amount of weight or balance, or making the surface interesting to the touch). Articulating (construction) details -- making them visually interesting, or highlighting their function -- becomes another way to achieve this.

 

At it's heart, much of the bauhaus design philosophy was already inherent in a lot of traditions that put emphasis on craft over bling. Japanese pottery, for example, or the Arts and Crafts movement.

 

Finally, the Bauhaus school focussed on finding ways to turn items produced by machines into functional pieces of art. They understood that the future would see many hand-crafted products becoming manufactured in factories. The Bauhaus school wanted to make sure that / believed that the same level of craft and care that went into producing high-end items by hand, could go into producing items with machines. Machine-built didn't need to mean "less well-crafted than hand-made" or "built with less care, and less emphasis on craft".

 

Bauhaus is all about creating well-crafted, aesthetically pleasing items without making them cost a bundle.

[Estycollector]

The basic tenets were: everyone should have access to aesthetically pleasing design, and aesthetically pleasing doesn't need to be a function of expensive materials alone.

 

Good construction and good craftsmanship should be prioritized in the making of any product, and well-constructed and well-crafted products can be (aesthetically) pleasing simply by virtue of being well crafted.

 

Aesthetics are still important, and thus, there is an attempt by the designers to fashion products (whether they be as small as household products or as large as buildings) that are pleasing to the eye and to the body.

 

Pleasing to the body seemed to be more important to the bauhaus designers than "bling", as it were. Thus, the designers might design something as simple as a pen with a gentle curve, so that it fit better in the hand than an uncurved pen. Or, if you look at chairs designed by designers trained in the bauhaus tradition, you'll notice that many of them have sloped seats (instead of the ubiquitous flat seat we're all used to). The sloped seat was considered more in line with the shape the body takes when sitting down, and thus more comfortable.

 

This kind of approach lead to the axiom: form follows function. Form wouldn't just be arbitrary; it stemmed from some aspect of the function of the design.

 

Finally, because the idea was that everyone should have access to well-crafted products, a lot of thought went into (goes into) lowering production costs, which lead to minimalizing design flourishes. Thus, if you look at bauhaus appliances, or furniture, or buildings, a lot of extraneous details are pared away. If you imagine a fork, for example, a bauhaus fork would be plain and wouldn't include all of those little flourishes that you would see on victorian cutlery. Or a pen: imagine a Yard-o-led pen with all of it's intricate silver-work. A bauhaus pen would eiliminate that, and put effort instead into making sure that the details worked very well and were built to last a lifetime. Not that the Yard-o-led would not last a lifetime, but if you're looking to reduce costs, reducing flourishes are a good way to do it.

 

Production costs, thus, go into making sure the item is well crafted, well put-together, and longer lasting. And the cost of the product begins to reflect the degree of care that goes into ensuring that the product lasts, and serves the owner well, rather than just looking good.

 

The problem, then, for a lot of bauhaus designers, is to figure out how to make the product visually pleasing in the absence of the kinds of details most people find visually pleasing (like intricate flourishes on pens or cutlery, or adding fancy materials (gold vs plastic) just to make something look good). Appealing to the senses is one way to do it: make it visually interesting, or pleasing to the touch (by fashioning a subtle curve, or adding just the right amount of weight or balance, or making the surface interesting to the touch). Articulating (construction) details -- making them visually interesting, or highlighting their function -- becomes another way to achieve this.

 

At it's heart, much of the bauhaus design philosophy was already inherent in a lot of traditions that put emphasis on craft over bling. Japanese pottery, for example, or the Arts and Crafts movement.

 

Finally, the Bauhaus school focussed on finding ways to turn items produced by machines into functional pieces of art. They understood that the future would see many hand-crafted products becoming manufactured in factories. The Bauhaus school wanted to make sure that / believed that the same level of craft and care that went into producing high-end items by hand, could go into producing items with machines. Machine-built didn't need to mean "less well-crafted than hand-made" or "built with less care, and less emphasis on craft".

 

Bauhaus is all about creating well-crafted, aesthetically pleasing items without making them cost a bundle.

 

Wonderful and helpful. Thank you. Based on on everyone having access, would not the Safari and Al-Star fit the definition better than the 2000?

Edited June 27, 2020 by Estycollector

[dennis_f]

 

Wonderful and helpful. Thank you. Based on on everyone having access, would not the Safari and Al-Star fit the definition better than the 2000?

 

I think that's debatable, because any answer is going to depend on how you define "access", or "aesthetically pleasing". Or how you define how rigourously the 2000 followed the basic precepts in comparison to the Al-Star/Safaris.

 

Yes, the latter might be more Bauhaus than the 2000 because they were more accessible; there was this notion -- I can't remember which of the founders coined it, or if it was attributed to the bauhaus later on -- that the designers wanted to fill everyday homes with well-crafted pieces of working art, and the safaris and al-stars would definitely find their way into more homes because they were less costly. But the 2000 might be "more" bauhaus than the Al-Star because it's not only functional but more aesthetically pleasing.

 

Or maybe the 2000 is "more" bauhaus because it elevated the use of a simple material -- plastic -- into something more refined (by making it more pleasing to the touch and to the eye).

 

Those are just philosophical arguments, though, and depend on a) how you define the terms used to define the movement, and b ) which of those three defining features you put more weight on. But yes, in some respects, the lower cost pen might be more bauhaus than the higher cost one.

Edited June 27, 2020 by dennis_f

[dennis_f]

 

Wonderful and helpful. Thank you. Based on on everyone having access, would not the Safari and Al-Star fit the definition better than the 2000?

 

 

Also, I should have said: you're welcome; I'm glad it helped. It was a quick and dirty answer and I was just trying to get to the main points quickly (as in: if you get these three things, you'll probably get the point). More could be said about the role of technology in the movement, and the degree to which different designers have played with those three defining elements, but they seemed beside the point.

 

In any case, I'm glad if it helped clarify something for you.

[torstar]

This website is excellent for downloadable info on this kind of thing...

 

https://monoskop.org/Bauhaus

[mana]

Bela Lugosi is still dead.

 

But so is Bauhaus too.

 

Anyway, I would call Lamy 2000... maybe Bauhaus inspired or a homage to Bauhaus but Bauhaus it certainly isn't for several reasons. It was designed more than 30 years after the Bauhaus school was operational (1919 to 1933) by a designer who was not connected to the Bauhaus movement in any way (Gerd Alfred Müller was born in 1932). Call me an art movement puritan but... if a piece falls short of those specs, it ain't it, it is just inspired etc. You could always say that it followed the principles and values of the movement but that in my books it still makes it fall short.

 

Oh, also, a bit of trivia, the maxim "Form follows function" was actually coined by a US architect Louis H. Sullivan in his 1896 essay "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered.":

 

"It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human, and all things super-human, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law." (Emphasis original)

[Estycollector]

This website is excellent for downloadable info on this kind of thing...

 

https://monoskop.org/Bauhaus

 

Thank you.

[torstar]

Thanks Mana, my interest in modern, postmod and post-post-mod strains aren't focused on Bauhaus

 

Tom Wolfe's book was interesting, he did his usual thing with the Movement

[torstar]

 

Thank you.

any lefty viewpoint is beat into the mud with an amazing collection of anything possible in any language!!!

 

i've grabbed probably 150,000 pages of books I'll never get to, the thought is what counts, enjoy!!

Edited June 27, 2020 by torstar

[mana]

"Any lefty viewpoint"? Anyway, monoskop is a mighty nice resource, thanks for posting that link

[mana]

...seems very modernist / post-mod oriented. Interesting.