The
New Bauhaus, founded in 1937 in
Chicago, was the immediate
successor to the
Bauhaus dissolved in 1933 under
Nazi
pressure. Bauhaus ideology had a strong impact throughout
America, but
it was only at the New Bauhaus that the complete
curriculum as
developed under
Walter Gropius in
Weimar and
Dessau was adopted and
further developed.
The former Bauhaus master
László Moholy-Nagy was founding director
of the New Bauhaus. He then headed the consecutive
School of Design
from 1938 until his death in 1946 (entitled
Institute of Design from 1944
onwards) aiming at liberating the
creative potential of his students
through disciplined
experimentation with
materials,
techniques, and
forms.
This corresponded to the
preliminary course at the "old Bauhaus", the practice of which was continued, as was a strict
affiliation with the
workshops during the entire training course. The focus on natural and
human
sciences was increased, and
photography grew to play a more
prominent role at the school in
Chicago than it had done in
Germany. The
New Bauhaus therefore offered a "preliminary course" which later ran
under the name of "foundation course". In "basic design", the students
became familiarized with a wide variety of materials (
wood,
veneer,
plastics,
textiles,
metal,
glass,
plaster etc.) in order to master their
structure, their
surface qualities, and their range of
application. Training in
mechanical techniques was more sophisticated than it had been in
Germany.
Emerging from the basic course, various workshops were installed, such
as "light, photography, film, publicity", "textile, weaving, fashion", "wood,
metal, plastics", "color, painting, decorating" and "architecture". The most
important achievement at the Chicago Bauhaus was probably in
photography, under the guidance of teachers such as
György Kepes,
Nathan Lerner,
Arthur Siegel or
Harry Callahan.
Whereas, in addition to
Moholy-Nagy,
Hin Bredendieck and
Marli Ehrmann, it was initially other
emigrants from the Bauhaus that came to teach in
Chicago, the staff was slowly supplemented by Americans. The method
and aim of the school were likewise adapted to American requirements.
Moholy-Nagy's successor at the head of the Institute of Design,
Serge Chermayeff, however, remained still quite true to the original Bauhaus,
aiming at the education of the widely oriented universal thinker and
designer. This changed step by step in the 1950s and through the merge
with the
Illinois Institute of Technology. The most radical alteration in the
structure of the curriculum occurred after 1955 with the appointment of
industry designer
Jay Doblin, who placed a much stronger emphasis on
economic
applicability. The Institute of Design is even now still part of the
Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and rates as a respected and
professionally oriented school of design.
The methods which came from the
German Bauhaus and which were then
transferred to
Chicago and further developed there have been adopted in
manifold modified form by other American schools. The Bauhaus is
mainly responsible for the gradual reduction of the until then unchallenged
predominance of the
Beaux-Arts tradition in the
United States.
source: bauhaus.de
other more or less direct Bauhaus successors were the HfG Ulm and the "Staatliche Bauhochschule Weimar"