The Curriculum Setting In The Bauhaus

Bauhaus, which reveals the grand idea of ‘arts and technology: a new unity', has laid the foundation of modern culture and education for design. This paper investigates the curriculum of Bauhaus in order to provide enlightenment for design education in contemporary era.First of all, the guiding concept and teaching programme is explored in this paper, which reveals five phases of development for Bauhaus: the initial phase calling for expressionism and combining art and crafts; the phase of growth calling for rational composition of modernism and combining art and technology; the phase of peak integrating transformed theory closely with industry; the phase constructing architectural education; the phase of decline.Furthermore, the five periods and change of guiding concept are adopted as main outline and the primary source is collected in this paper. Generally speaking, a great amount of case studies which reflect three teaching systems(the elementary education, the workshop education and the architectural education) are revealed. More specifically, the elementary education transformed from theoretical education to unity of theory and practice and finally emphasising ability of practice. Johanness Itten, Moholy-Nagy and Josef Albers are three leaders for these three phases respectively. Besides, the workshop education experienced four phases which are Weimar phases combining art and crafts, Weimar later phase and Dessau earlier phase integrating art and technology, Dessau later phase emphasising training and Berlin phase of decline. Finally, according to the establishment of the Department of Architecture, the period of architectural education can be divided into Gropius phase before establishment, Hannes Meyer phase after establishment and Mies phase regarding architectural education as a core.This paper explores the contents behind history as well as influence which the guiding concept in different phases has made upon teaching contents and achievements. At the same time, the inspiration from Bauhaus is also deducted in conclusion.