Ep 211| 10 Lessons learnt from BAUHAUS Museum- A Design Legendary
7 May 2024 · 11 min
This is a podcast episode titled "Ep 211| 10 Lessons learnt from BAUHAUS Museum- A Design Legendary" released in May 2024. The single speaker shares insights and lessons learned from visiting the Bauhaus Museum in Germany, discussing its historical significance, design principles, and influence on modern design, architecture, and product development. The episode also promotes the speaker's design programs and encourages listeners to engage with the content and community.
In this podcast, I'm going to be giving you 10 lessons. Whatever I learned from the legendary museum called Borges Design Museum. When I was in Germany, I had a chance of visiting this museum. It was just about the day when I have to board my flight back to India. It was a day before. It was exactly two days before I went into this museum. Because this is one of the big thing which is in my head. For this entire trip, I needed to visit this museum at any cost. I was having different schedules, assignment, all these things to complete, but I took a time to go there. You know what, it's one of the best museums I have ever seen. Guys, this is amazing. And in this podcast, I'm going to give you the snippets of whatever I learned. You don't have to visit that museum. This particular information is going to blow you. Okay? So take a lot of notes. Let's jump in. Welcome to this Design for Change. Thank you for staying tuning in with me. And through this podcast we are impacting thousands of people across 31, 32 countries. In fact, recently a country added. And also I'm on a mission to help 1 million designers lead a creative lifestyle of a freedom designers. And also whether they have a design degree or experience, it doesn't matter. I'm going to help them. One million designers. Guys, if you are in that journey, if you wanted to be that designer, hop into one of my programs, I'll help you. We have a free program, we have a paid version. Whatever is your situation, you can take. We have a program which is time constrained. People who are working full time, we do have a plans for them, people are having a full time availability. We do have an internship programs for them. So. So based on your interest, you can come and hop on. Okay? Because if you are part of this big journey, in just 90 days you will start seeing the transformation and the results. It's not only about the job, results, this, that, but as a person, your transformation through the mindset will happen. Okay, so today this one information, whatever I'm going to give you the lessons about the Bauhaus is definitely going to blow you and have a great impact on your design journey. See, Bauhaus Museum is from Weimar Germany. Okay? It's actually an institution initially that was founded on the 19th century on the world of modern design and architecture. So like, let's say it was founded in 1919 to be very exact, by Walter Grupius in Weimar Germany. If you google it, you will get this information and you can find where is the Weimar in Germany. It's a central and a little northern side of it. And it's an art school, guys. Basically it's aimed to have a good collaboration between the craft and the art. And how do the technology really meet this kind of artistic people? Okay. And later what happened is this moved into Dessau due to various reason. I'll tell you why. Because the Nazis shut down this in 1933 because of the World War. We all know that, right? And then it went to Berlin later stage. But currently it is there in Desau, Germany. It's a beautiful place. In fact, the architecture will tell you this is a place where the entire creativity will happen. So that kind of a beautiful, beautiful place. It is. And also it's one of the most influential design schools, guys. To be. To be. To make a very close proximity. The institute where I studied, NID Ahmedabad is the best college in the country. It's one of the top two, three design colleges in the country. Okay. This curriculum was designed by people from Bauhaus design museums. Bauhaus design schools, art principals and faculties went there and they came here in order to create a curriculum. I was very surprised when I visited there. Nid's name was there. And also lot of pedagogy and the culture and the syllabus, whatever we are studying the curriculum, it's all coming from their learning. It's like doing. Learning design by doing. Learning design by doing, learning by doing. This one particular word was derived from the boss. So this is a big lesson, what I've learned, guys. And also BOSS advocated for a very, very radical design approach. They have a very eccentric way of promoting your design information and also parallel emphasizing your functionality, simplicity, true and harness to the material. Whatever you're choosing for your design. You know what it's actually called a unity of art and technology. They wanted to always create that new aesthetics for this modern industrial age. That's why Bauhaus has become a class way of seeing the designers. You know what? It's based on some mass production making beautiful yet affordable project. Also because in those times it was very, very scarce of resources. World war was happening. And also people are not having house food. Basic amenities was missing. So what happened is Bauhaus designers really created a communism kind of a house where it can be scaled up for more than 50, 60,000 people in just one go with minimal resources. So in fact the world, economics, the world politics was also in that way because that was the need of the hour. So Bohus designers and BOSS founders also had a major role to play in that. In fact, that's also one reason why this particular style of teaching design has become really popular. Okay? And the very first thing what I would say I've learned is simplicity is the actual sophistication, guys, they make everything very, very, very damn simple. Second is they have a communism design concept. Like let's say if they're making any product, they think of making it in a mass scalable way. It's not like we'll only address for the niche luxury segment. No, that's the second big learning. So you can apply it in your projects, in your own way, your own client, in your own project nature. But this is the lessons what I've learned. Third is functionality, aesthetics. This is mind blowing. Guys, if you really get mind blown, please, please type in this podcast episode. What did you really feel? See, so far I've been learning and I've been thinking about aesthetics is different, functionality is different. You know, they changed my perception, they changed my neurochemistry in a different way. Functionality is aesthetics. Your function should show that aesthetics. This is completely a utta thought. You know what I was thinking this thought after even visiting the museum also for several days. Oh my God. We are thinking aesthetics are something different. Functionality is something different. And we are always trying to bring the fight between these two, right? But these people have a different notion towards it. Functionality is aesthetics. Okay, so the fourth learning is design is experimental in nature. Always you need to be experimental. Always you need to be experimental. And that led me to learn their 10 principles also. Guys, in Bohus design, okay, Bohus design has created a very simple ten principles. Form follows function. Second is true to the materials. Third is simplicity and minimalism. Fourth is unity of art and technology. Fifth is functionality over ornamentation. Sixth is geometric and abstract forms. Seventh is standardization and mass production. Eighth is harmony between form and function. Ninth is interdisciplinary collaboration between engineers, technicians, artists, manufacturing people, etc. Tenth is social responsibility and accessibility. You know what guys? These ten principles are legendary. That is why modern architecture and furniture design and typography and graphic design all were inspired by these guys. It's not a. It's not a joke. It's like they have created a base for all all these things. You know, even the Boss Museum opened in Weimar in 1995 and it attracted 1 lakh plus visitors across the world. It's the house of collection. Over 50,000 objects, furnitures, ceramics, metalworks were there. Guys, when I was visiting that you will never believe. You know the notable furnitures, like let's say the ideo. So the ikea. Ikea. Swedish minimal Scandinavian design. One of the bases was formed by Bauhus principles. You will never believe. One of the base good architectures and the minimal concept were formed because of the Bauhaus principles. You know, the museum houses huge furniture skies, particularly people like Mart Stamp, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Brewer. These people are the classical guys in furniture. You know, pieces such as Brewer's Wesley chair, Rob's Barcelona chair. You can watch that guys. Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chair. It's one of the like it goes in lakhs of rupees. When it was designed first. Okay, so you can find that. And also collection includes like good experience related product or furnitures. Exploring the technicalities, how the weaving happened, how the material happened. So this is tremendous. And also when it comes to product design, they have a huge lamp, tableware, household appliances, toys, which is common for everything, which is common for everybody. People in all age categories can use it. People with entire mass production can use it. So they have created functional and affordable product for the mass market. So this is the major, major learning which I've got, guys, you know what you can have? You can read Wilhelm Wagon Fields iconic table lamp. You can just google that. Mariana brands geometric metal teapot. Beautiful. People would pay lakhs rupees to get that teapot, guys, okay. Typefaces and graphic design was also very prominent. They had a very good, profound impact on the typefaces. You know what the letterhead design, the poster design, the graphic works created by Herbert Baer, Josh Schmidt and also Laszlo Mohl Nagi. These people have, are the, what you call graphic designers and typeface designers who have created that big impact. There are a lot of artworks, architectures. You can see Walter Grupius and Hannes Meyer's architecture works. Guys, it will all influence you. And you, you will see urban planning and architecture, how happened in the 19th century. So that is the major, major advantage of seeing that. And you know what? More than this, the colors, what they choose was my biggest learning. It's a fifth or sixth learning, I would say, because the colors was very subtle. Even the museum's interiors, even the music's cafe, even the music, the museum's cafeteria, even the museum's hallway, even the museum's display, everything was so subtle. You are drawn into an entire different world which is not there outside. Okay, so that was the most influential. And also most of them were like product design, furniture design. You know what design thinkers really should get accustomed to. This guy Design thinkers needs to go and visit it at least for once in their lifetime. You know what? Charles Ray Eames and their architecture was majorly also influenced because of this Bosch museum and its principal. There is a huge connection between architects and designers, guys. I found that in fact there is a huge takeaway. Being a designer you can take from architect and also architect vice versa can happen. And I can see in my batch it's a lot of people from architecture coming to design. It's because of this resonance is because of this similar thought process and they take care of the overall planning of the house, taking care of the technology, taking care of the functionality, taking care of the aesthetics, taking care of the well being. Similarly, a product designer needs to also think about something before you design a product. So these are all the top learnings. Guys, if you really like this podcast, give me a best star rating in Apple Spotify and you can follow me in Spotify and get notified for further episodes. And there is a free gift which I'm giving you guys. You can go and climb it because I really really wanted to give you as a token of as an exchange of celebration of my 200 plus episodes. And you can hop on to my everyday program which I have for 30 minutes according to Indian Standard Time 6am it's free of cost. Take an advantage. I know a lot of people will not come because it's early in the morning. It's hell, a lot of difficult for people to come early in the morning, right? That's the reason I've kept it. Because I wanted only serious students to work with me. No matter if you have a design degree, no matter if you have educational qualification, it's okay. You can still create products and designs. You can create an impact as well. 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