Gropius and Mies

The Literature on Education and the Built Environment . . . . 3

Gropius and the Bauhaus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

The Bauhaus Building at Dessau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Mies and the Illinois Institute of Technology . . . . . . . . 8

The IIT Buildings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Mies' Crown Hall at IIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Emerging Needs of Today's Art Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Applicability of IIT and Bauhaus Designs Today . . . . . . . . 13

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Physical setting is important in any educational undertaking, but it assumes special significance in the case of studies that require space, equipment, storage areas, special lighting, and the many other necessities of studying and making art. The literature on the relationship between successful learning and setting confirms this assertion. It will be briefly reviewed with an emphasis on emerging needs (such as increasing reliance on technology) and this will be followed by a discussion of the manner in which art schools of the past have managed the problem of providing optimum spaces in which students and teachers can pursue their work. The study of these institutions indicates that schools of art and design are most successful when they have a coherent purpose and the element

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in which a series of trestle-type drafting tables were place perpendicular to the outer wall with approximately one window per table. All storage was on the inner wall of the room, taking up no well-lit space and providing room to hang drawings. The Trade School contained library, classrooms, and instructors' rooms and the studio tower was the location of the students' rooms (28) and other facilities. The school was quite self-contained and this was intended to help create a community in which ideas were shared. Interestingly, although Gropius held the idea that there had to be equality among all the design pursuits the majority of what are thought of as 'trades' were carried out in the well-lit but short-of-windows basement and first floor of the workshop building. One trade that received plenty of natural light, however, was wall-painting and another was architecture. It is not difficult to guess that, despite his egalitarian ideals, Gropius was building a certain level of class privilege into the school. After all, the trades would benefit every bit as much from natural light as the finer arts do but in the Bauhaus scheme the hierarchy of the arts still asserted itself in small ways. Because he was given a great deal
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Approximate Word count = 4082
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)

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