128. Read the following passage, then answer the question below.

In 1919, the architect Walter Gropius opened a school in the German city of Weimar with an ambitious mission: to unite art and craft, which had drifted apart during the Industrial Revolution. The school was called the Bauhaus, roughly 'building house,' and it taught that a well-designed object should serve its purpose clearly, without ornament that served only to display wealth. Students studied color theory and typography, but they also spent time in workshops for metalwork, weaving, and carpentry, learning to handle materials directly rather than merely draw them.

The school's output reflected this philosophy. Marcel Breuer, a student who later taught at the school, built a chair from bent steel tubes after being inspired, he said, by the handlebars of his bicycle. The chair's frame was light, cheap to produce, and could be manufactured in large numbers, an important aim for designers who believed that good design should not be a luxury. Similarly, Marianne Brandt's lamps and tea sets combined simple geometric shapes with industrial materials such as glass and nickel plating.

The Bauhaus survived only fourteen years. Political pressure in Germany pushed it from Weimar to Dessau and then to Berlin, where it closed in 1933 after the Nazi government attacked its style as un-German. Ironically, persecution scattered its teachers around the world. Gropius and Mies van der Rohe moved to the United States, where they shaped university architecture programs, and the glass-and-steel office tower became a symbol of the modern city. Some critics argue that the Bauhaus legacy has become a cliche, pointing to the endless identical boxes it supposedly inspired. Yet that criticism may say more about imitators than about teachers who insisted that form must be fitted to function, not to fashion.

The word 'Ironically' in paragraph 3 signals that