22/07/2024
Published in
Expansion
Ainhoa Garmendia
Associate Professor of Tecnun-School of Engineering of the University of Navarra
Let's look for a moment at the objects around us. Why are they the way they are? Who designed them, and for whom? When we illuminate our desk with an adjustable lamp, sit on a tubular chair or use prefabricated household objects, we benefit from the revolutionary design of the Bauhaus, the legendary art school and design of the early 20th century. Behind these characteristic objects is Marianne Brandt, the architect who synthesized the design of the Bauhaus. This designer worked in a world created by and for men, where she had to make a niche for herself to develop her designs in metalwork. This is how, silently among a patrol of male designers, she forged the identity of the Bauhaus style and therefore, the industrial design of modernity.
During the years of the Das Staatliche Bauhaus school, from 1919 to 1933, director Walter Gropius brought together the best artists of his time: Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Mies Van der Rohe, among others. The designs of students and teachers focused on functionality while taking care of the formal aspects, with the aim of designing a habitat suitable for human beings, goal . Although the school proclaimed itself democratic, women lived a marginal status . Not only because of the absence of female teachers, but also because the enrollment of women was strictly controlled. Newly enrolled female students were directed to study in the textile or ceramics workshop. Brandt, however, was a bit luckier. She was the first woman to be admitted to the metal workshop and later to direct it.
Artist and designer, Marianne Brandt (Germany, 1893-1983) has gone down in history as one of the few women from the Bauhaus who stood out in the world of men's design . Her creations have endured in our imaginary of the domestic design , among them the flexo, hanging lamps and tea services. Other Brandt designs still continue to amaze collectors. The MT49 teapot in constructivist forms broke the record at auction at Sotheby's in New York in 2007. The figure closed at
$361,000. Brandt herself designed and handcrafted this original prototype in the Bauhaus workshop in 1927. Designed in metal and mahogany, its purely geometric forms are inspired by the Hungarian Constructivist artist László Moholy-Nagy, then master of the metal workshop. This collage of flat and spherical shapes creates a sculpture that casually appears to form a teapot. However, there is nothing coincidental about it. Brandt designed the object in such a way that the form is directly related to the function to be performed. According to Bauhaus Archive curator Klaus Weber, Brandt encapsulated the essence of the Bauhaus with his design.
Interestingly, her beginnings in the workshop were not entirely comfortable. In her 1970 Letter to the Younger Generation, she commented: "At first, they did not take kindly to me, feeling that there was no place for a woman in a metal workshop. Later they confessed this to me and, in the meantime, expressed their dissatisfaction by charging me with all subject of dull, monotonous work. How many small hemispheres did I patiently hammer out of new, brittle silver, thinking that this was the way it had to be and that all beginnings are difficult?"
In reality, the stories of the Bauhaus women became known much later. Even the Bauhaus museum has recently exhibited their female designs to make amends for history. "When we design a world that is meant to work for everyone, we will need women on the conference room", comments Caroline Perez-Criado in her book Invisible Women, a story about absences. "Failing to include women's perspective drives an unintended male bias that passes for gender-neutral." The world needs more female voices and gazes that express their experience from their own reality to solve challenges that are yet to be designed.