Hannes Meyer
Encyclopedia
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
and second director of the Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
in Dessau
Dessau
Dessau is a town in Germany on the junction of the rivers Mulde and Elbe, in the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt. Since 1 July 2007, it is part of the merged town Dessau-Roßlau. Population of Dessau proper: 77,973 .-Geography:...
from 1928 to 1930.
Early work
Meyer was born in Basel, Switzerland, trained as a mason, and practiced as an architect in Switzerland, Belgium, and Germany, briefly serving as a department head at the KruppKrupp
The Krupp family , a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, have become famous for their steel production and for their manufacture of ammunition and armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp, was the largest company in Europe at the beginning of the 20th...
Works in Essen from 1916 to 1918. In Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
in 1923 he co-founded the architectural magazine 'ABC Beiträge zum Bauen' (Contributions on Building) with Hans Schmidt
Hans Schmidt
Hans Schmidt is the name of:* Hans Schmidt , American Roman Catholic priest executed for committing murder* Hans Schmidt , stage name of Guy Larose, Canadian wrestler* Hans Schmidt , German bobsledder...
, Mart Stam
Mart Stam
Mart Stam was a Dutch architect, urban planner, and furniture designer. Stam was extraordinarily well-connected, and his career intersects with important moments in the history of 20th century European architecture, including chair design at the Bauhaus, the Weissenhof Estate, the "Van Nelle...
, and the Supremist
Suprematism
Suprematism was an art movement focused on fundamental geometric forms which formed in Russia in 1915-1916. It was not until later that suprematism received conventional museum preparations...
/ Russian cultural ambassador, El Lissitzky
El Lissitzky
, better known as El Lissitzky , was a Russian artist, designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant garde, helping develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works...
.
Meyer's design philosophy is reflected in the following quote:
"1. sex life, 2. sleeping habits, 3. pets, 4. gardening, 5. personal hygiene, 6. weather protection, 7. hygiene in the home, 8. car maintenance, 9. cooking, 10. heating, 11. exposure to the sun, 12. services - these are the only motives when building a house. We examine the daily routine of everyone who lives in the house and this gives us the functional diagram - the functional diagram and the economic programme are the determining principles of the building project."(Meyer, 1928)
In 1926 Meyer established a firm with Hans Wittwer and produced his two most famous projects, for the Basel Petersschule (1926) and for the Geneva League of Nations Building (1926/1927). Both projects are strict, inventive, and rely on the new possibilities of structural steel. Neither was built.
Bauhaus
Walter GropiusWalter Gropius
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture....
appointed Meyer head of the Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
architecture department when it was finally established in April 1927. (Stam had been Gropius's first choice.) Meyer brought his radical functionalist
Functionalism (architecture)
Functionalism, in architecture, is the principle that architects should design a building based on the purpose of that building. This statement is less self-evident than it first appears, and is a matter of confusion and controversy within the profession, particularly in regard to modern...
viewpoint he named, in 1929, Die neue Baulehre (the new way to build), that architecture was an organizational task with no relationship to aesthetics, that buildings should be low cost and designed to fulfill social needs. He was also an ardent Marxist.
Meyer brought the two most significant important building commissions for the school, both of which still stand: five apartment buildings in the city of Dessau
Dessau
Dessau is a town in Germany on the junction of the rivers Mulde and Elbe, in the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt. Since 1 July 2007, it is part of the merged town Dessau-Roßlau. Population of Dessau proper: 77,973 .-Geography:...
, and the headquarters of the Federal School of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund
Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund
The Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund was a confederation of German trade unions in Germany founded during the Weimar Republic. It was founded in 1919 and was initially powerful enough to organize a general strike in 1920 against a right-wing coup d'état. After the 1929 Wall Street crash,...
(ADGB), a confederation of German trade unions, in Bernau
Bernau bei Berlin
Bernau bei Berlin is a German town in the Barnim district. The town is located about northeast of Berlin.-History:...
. The school turned its first profit under his leadership in 1929.
But he also brought political dissension, both within the Bauhaus and outside. Inside the school, particularly after he became Bauhaus director in February 1928, he tightened the program around architecture and industrial design, forcing the resignations of Herbert Bayer
Herbert Bayer
Herbert Bayer was an Austrian American graphic designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director, environmental & interior designer, and architect, who was widely recognized as the last living member of the Bauhaus and was instrumental in the development of the Atlantic Richfield Company's...
, Marcel Breuer
Marcel Breuer
Marcel Lajos Breuer , was a Hungarian-born modernist, architect and furniture designer of Jewish descent. One of the masters of Modernism, Breuer displayed interest in modular construction and simple forms.- Life and work :Known to his friends and associates as Lajkó, Breuer studied and taught at...
, and other figures. In the increasingly dangerous political atmosphere of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
, Meyer's own outspoken communism and the growth of the Communist student organization in the Bauhaus became a threat to the existence of the school. Mayor Hesse of Dessau fired him, with a monetary settlement, on August 1, 1930. Meyer's open letter in a left-wing newspaper two weeks later characterizes the Bauhaus as "Incestuous theories (blocking) all access to healthy, life-oriented design... As head of the Bauhaus, I fought the Bauhaus style".
After Bauhaus
Meyer responded to his dismissal by taking seven students and a secretary to MoscowMoscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, forming a group they called the "Left Column". This was a parallel effort to Ernst May
Ernst May
Ernst May was a German architect and city planner.May successfully applied urban design techniques to the city of Frankfurt am Main during Germany's Weimar period, and in 1930 less successfully exported those ideas to Soviet Union cities, newly created under Stalinist rule...
's "May brigade". Both groups worked on architectural and urban planning projects guided by socialist-utopian ideals. The Soviet Union dismissed all such foreigners in 1936.
Meyer returned to Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
for three years, then emigrated to Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
to work for the Mexican government as the director of the Instituto del Urbanismo y Planificación from 1942 through 1949. While in Mexico City he also served as the director of Estampa Mexicana, the publishing house of the Taller de Gráfica Popular (the Popular Graphic Arts Workshop). In 1942 he was with his friend the Italian photographer Tina Modotti
Tina Modotti
Tina Modotti was an Italian photographer, model, actress, and revolutionary political activist.- Early life :Modotti was born Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti Mondini in Udine, Friuli, Italy...
the night she died under mysterious circumstances.
Meyer returned to Switzerland in 1949, and died in 1954.