debauhaus1-1, Exercise 1: School versus style

Model answer:

The Bauhaus was a real institution: the Staatliches Bauhaus, an art and design school founded in Weimar in 1919, moved to Dessau in 1925 and to Berlin in 1932, and closed in 1933 (check the dates). It had teachers, students, workshops, three directors and changing ideas. "Bauhaus style" is a later and looser label for a plain, modern, industrial-looking approach to design, and it is used for objects and buildings that have little or no connection with the school.

Two reasons the difference matters:
1. Credit and accuracy. If "Bauhaus" just means a look, then anything minimalist gets attributed to the school, and the people who actually worked there (and the people elsewhere who designed in a similar way) are mis-credited.
2. Understanding the school. The school's early years were craft-based and quite different from the later look, so treating it as one style hides how its ideas changed (check the details of each period in later chapters).