The first ideas of architecture came out of the first civilization in world history, which was the Greek civilization. The Greeks were directly followed by the Roman civilization that surpassed that of the Greeks, being a much more militarily aggressive empire. But the Romans stole many of the Greek architectural ideas. Hence, the first historical period that classifies architecture is the Classical period that embodies both the Greek and Roman ideas. The next period in architecture is the Romanesque period, which came at the end of the dark ages until the beginnings of the Renaissance in 1410. The Italian city of Venice was an architectural hub during the Re

The term “Bauhaus” means house for building. The Bauhaus movement began in 1919 when Germany was suffering a huge economic slump due to the war that had just ended and used most of the country’s financial and physical resources. The architect Walter Gropius was appointed to head up the Bauhaus which was to be a new social order and rebuild the fallen country. According to information obtained from a website at www.architecture.about.com/library, characteristics of Bauhaus buildings are flat roofs with small facades and cubic shapes. The colors used are basic, usually white, gray, beige, or black. Gropius along with Mies van der Rohe were two famous German architects who immigrated to the United States when Hitler rose to power in 1933. A new term was created for the American form of Bauhaus architecture, which was the International Style. This term came from a book published in 1932 and written by a historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock and architect Phillip Johnson. The International Style became a symbol of capitalism. This type of architecture is popular for office buildings, like the glass and bronze Seagram building in New York and also in upscale homes for the rich. Mies van der Rohe with Phillip Johnson designed the Seagram Building.

Architecture is yet another medium where Germany has delved into and came away with some new idea, never to have been thought of before. It is another example of how Germanic culture has bumped up again and cross-pollinated with world culture.

Modernist architecture that was the brainchild of the Germans is evidenced in our daily lives, on Elon’s campus and the surro

Some topics in this essay:
, Mass Audience, Nancy Talbot, Alamance Moseley, Walter Gropius, International Style, Centennial Hall, Germans Talbot, Renaissance Gothic, Hitler Nazi, world culture, van der rohe, architecture mass audience, cross-pollinated world culture, defined bauhaus, architecture defined, german modernist, modernist architecture, elon’s campus, town burlington, german architecture mass, bauhaus style, period architecture, architecture defined bauhaus, columns structural,