Oskar Schlemmer, German
painter, sculptor, designer & choreographer, birthday 4 September 1888
Kenzo Tange,
Japanese architect & Pritzker Prize winner, birthday 4 September 1913
Sebastiano Serlio,
Italian mannerist architect & author, birthday 6 Septeber 1475
It seems as though the Bauhaus gets a lot of attention here
but its far-reaching impact is limitless.
With the addition of Oskar Schlemmer to the faculty in the sculpture
department and eventually the theater department, the influence on the art
world exceeded the oppression of the Third Reich. One unique feature of the Bauhaus is that so
many controversial and challenging individuals with conflicting ideas thrived
in constructive disharmony. Schlemmer
objected to the popular abstract ideas, focusing more on the human figure and
its relationship to the space in which it occupies fundamentally grounding what
architecture should be. This is
illustrated by his reduction of the human form to an architectural language that
emulated movement thereby “capturing” the fourth dimension in physical space. The influence of these dancing
forms can be seen today in the work of Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid who both
strive for Schlemmer’s theories in the contemporary world. 
In the aftermath of the destruction of World War II, the
metabolist movement took hold in Japan and one of its most ardent supporters
and contributors was Kenzo Tange. This
movement is characterized by large-scale flexible & expandable structures what
would grow organically as the needs of a population changed.
It is easy to make this connection in the
atmosphere of two nearly leveled cities where the architects of the time were
mostly concerned with housing the demoralized population. In the case of Tange, his design was selected
to memorialize the event with the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The museum hovers over the axis of the park
in plain, unadorned concrete so as to not distract from the contents inside; the
visitor is suspended on piloti in the figurative mushroom cloud. 
Not long afterward in 1953, Tange was one of the
few select architects and journalist who were invited to participate in the documentation
of the habitual construction of the Ise Shrine.
Historically a closed process it also marked the end of the US
occupation of Japan. Later, he was able
to demonstrate to the world his talent for combining traditional Japanese
design with the modernism by completing a few structures for the 1964 Tokyo
Olympics; the first held in Asia. This
would make Tange’s work in demand around the world and notably, his funeral was
held in the Tokyo Cathedral he designed. 
In the time of the Renaissance, the world was hungry to
elevate the human experience not just societally and scientifically but artistically. As advances in building and communication technologies
arose and in his day, Sebastiano Serlio laid the groundwork for proliferation
of the Italian Renaissance style throughout Europe with his influential book “I
Sette Libri Dell'architettura”, a.k.a. “The Seven Books of Architecture”. This addition to the design community
enlivened the atmosphere. It examined
and definitively identified the proportions and geometries of
architecture. It combined both high
quality illustration with explicit written instruction for not only architects
but the builders and craftsmen of the time to achieve what could be argued
perfection in built design focusing on the practical rather than theoretical
aspects. 
This work is still in use today
and is a phenomenal reference for the classical orders. The comparison could be made that what Serlio
did for architecture was what the Bauhaus accomplished in the 20th century. To see Serlio’s work in physical form visit
le Châteaux de Fontainebleau. 
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