The Bauhaus and modern minimalism: why less became more

Clean lines, simple geometry and nothing that does not need to be there: the minimal interiors we know today owe a great deal to a German design school that existed for only fourteen years.

A short, remarkable history

The Bauhaus was founded in Weimar in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius. It moved to Dessau in 1925, where Gropius designed its famous glass-walled school building, completed in 1926. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe became director in 1930, and in 1932 the school moved again, to Berlin. Under pressure from the Nazi regime it closed in 1933. Many of its teachers and students emigrated, spreading its ideas across Europe and to the United States.

Big ideas

• Art and craft together. Students learned in workshops for metal, textiles, ceramics, furniture and printing, as well as studying art.
• Design for industry. Objects were meant to be produced well and used every day, not kept in a cabinet.
• Form follows function. Shape grows from purpose, with ornament removed rather than added.
• Elementary geometry. Circles, squares and triangles, often in primary colours.

Minimalism is not the absence of design. It is design with every unnecessary line taken away.

Bauhaus objects you will recognise

The Wagenfeld table lamp of 1924, with its glass shade and clear stem, is still made today. Marianne Brandt, one of the most gifted students in the metal workshop, designed tea infusers and ceiling lights that became models for mass-produced fittings. Marcel Breuer's tubular steel chairs introduced a new kind of furniture, light and strong.

Minimal does not mean bare

A minimal room still needs something for the eye to rest on. In a pared-back space, a simple ring or disc of plaster around a pendant adds shadow and depth without breaking the calm. Painting the piece the same colour as the ceiling keeps it quiet; a contrasting colour turns it into a single, deliberate accent. Explore our Modern Minimal collection.