Founder of the Bauhaus, founder of modern design education
A German architect, founder of the design school "Bauhaus," of unmatched influence on twentieth-century architecture, design, and art education. In 1919 he founded the Bauhaus in Germany, arguing for tearing down the walls between art and craft, between fine art and useful design, so that architecture, painting, sculpture, furniture, and graphic design fused to serve the mass life of the industrial age. The Bauhaus trained a group of future modernist masters, and its ideas of "form follows function" and "design for the masses" shaped nearly everything modern we see today — from buildings and furniture to typefaces. Though it lasted only fourteen years before the Nazis shut it, its spirit spread across the whole world.
The Bauhaus lasted only from 1919 to 1933 before the Nazis forcibly closed it. Yet this small school redefined "design": it taught making things for ordinary people, both useful and beautiful, by industrial means. The minimal furniture, sans-serif fonts, and functionalist appliances you use today almost all carry Bauhaus blood. A school strangled young spread its genes across the whole modern world.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.