What were the key ideas of the Bauhaus?

The key points of the Bauhaus ideology were the following two things:
1.To bring together the act of creating the product with the act of designing it, so creative products could be manufactured. This was due to the school’s belief that Manufacturing had drawn away from creativity, and so consumers were getting products fit for purpose but not beautiful in design. Given that they believed that form must follow function, this makes sense as they are stating that whilst an object must fulfil its purpose first, it should also be designed to be aesthetically pleasing as well.
2. They believed that art wasn’t purely creative but also an intellectual pursuit, attempting to combine the practical skills involved in Painting and Sculpting with the act of designing something with a use the market needs. This, like above, centres on making the design and creation process a more natural flow via connecting them, as well as following their “Form Must Follow Function” ideology whilst combining many different areas of art.

Do you feel that the ideas could have an influence on contemporary games design?

Very much so, the idea of “Form must follow Function” is one I use a lot, and is very useful. Characters, Vehicles and other such things need to be designed in a way that can telegraph their actions so that the player can understand what is happening, levels need to be designed to work before they look good, and so on. This isn’t to say they should be designed to work then look nice, as “Form must follow Function” implies, as Game Creation is a digital art and so items can be edited after testing, so they can be made to look good first, then edited to work after. But in the end it must simply work as the priority, even if it means reducing the aesthetic quality of the item.

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References

The Art Story, Bauhaus, www.theartstory.org/movement-bauhaus.htm, 12/10/17