Bauhaus Armchairs

"Form follows function" is also applicable to the Bauhaus armchair. The designs of Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier are classic, textbook, examples for the ideas behind the Bauhaus furniture; namely as a reduced form offering high seating comfort in an elegant objects. The Barcelona Chair, Wassily Chair and LC furniture are all delightful expressions of this Bauhaus style - even if the Le Corbusier furniture cannot technically be considered as Bauhaus furniture it has its origins in the same time and their designs also follows the functionalist principles.

The Bauhaus in Dessau

Wassily Chair in use

Typical for Bauhaus is designs which deliberately expose the basic construction of the furniture and which dispense with the decorative elements and ornamentation that were typical for furniture and furnishings of the period . This approach to furniture design led to objects with a unique clarity and rationality that quickly attracted a popular following. In place of decorated surfaces Bauhaus designers and their contemporaries tended to work in materials such as chrome plated steel and employed black surfaces in order to better define the functional form of their objects. In addition many Bauhaus designers readily utilised leather in their designs; a material which at the beginning of the 20th century was widely used in furniture of all types.