Bauhaus Dessau building The Bauhaus Dessau is one of the iconic buildings of the 20th century. It was designed by Walter Gropius and was officially opened on 4 December 1926, having taken just over a year to build. It is "regarded as a 'built manifesto' of the Bauhaus's ideas, in which the functionality and aesthetics of the design coalesce to form a single entity". The building was commissioned by the city of Dessau, who financed the project and provided the building plot. The plans were drafted by Gropius's architectural firm as the Bauhaus did not have its own architecture department until 1927, but the interior fittings were made in the Bauhaus workshops. Gropius was required to incorporate two schools into the building; the Bauhaus design school and a municipal vocational school. There were 140 students in total, so most of them had to seek accommodation in the inner city area of Dessau. In 1930,
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, then the Bauhaus director, converted some studios into classrooms. The building was renovated in 2006 to return it to its original layout. The studios are now let as tourist accommodation. Due to political pressure, the Bauhaus Dessau closed in 1932 and Mies van der Rohe set up a privately funded Bauhaus in Berlin, although this also closed after less than a year. The glass curtain walling, auditorium, stage and cafeteria were restored.
Bauhaus Dessau Foundation was founded in 1994 to research and preserve the heritage of the Bauhaus. The building was inscribed as part of the World Heritage site in 1996, after which extensive renovations were carried out. These were completed in 2006. The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation uses the rest of the building for its administration; housing a museum, a shop and the restored cafeteria; letting out the former student rooms as tourist accommodation; and hiring out other areas of the building, such as the auditorium, for seminars and conventions.
Meisterhäuser The
Meisterhäuser (Masters' houses) are a group of seven flat-roofed, cubic modernist houses about 600 metres from the Bauhaus Dessau building, designed by Walter Gropius for the senior staff of the Bauhaus. They were built in 1925–26 on commission from city of Dessau. They consisted of three pairs of
semi-detached houses, and a detached house at the end of the row for Gropius, the school director. The houses were built within a small pine wood, with the aim of respecting the character of the landscape. Along with their families, the original residents were:
Lyonel Feininger and
László Moholy-Nagy who lived next door to Gropius (although Feininger never taught at the Bauhaus in Dessau);
Oskar Schlemmer and
Georg Muche lived in the next pair of houses;
Wassily Kandinsky and
Paul Klee lived in the last pair. These were designed by the architectural firm Bruno Fioretti Marquez, with the interior layout by the artist
Olaf Nicolai. The interiors of these structures are used as exhibition spaces, with information about the history of the site. From 2016 to 2019 the Kandinsky/Klee houses were closed for a major restoration carried out by the , to completely restore the interior of the houses, with a particular focus on recreating the original colour schemes.
Laubenganghäuser The ('Houses with Balcony Access') are five blocks of apartment buildings, providing a total of 90 flats, in south Dessau which were built in 1930. They were designed by Hannes Meyer, who was then director of the Bauhaus. They were built as
social housing, with each apartment expected to house a family of up to four people, following Meyer's motto ("People's needs rather than luxury consumption"). A key part of the design was to use all materials sparingly to save costs and to design the interiors to utilise the small space as effectively as possible. Even the door handles were designed so as to use a minimum amount of metal. The balconies were intended not only to provide economical and space saving access to the apartments, but to also facilitate social interaction between residents. The apartments all had central heating and bathrooms with
terrazzo flooring and enamel baths, and were considered well appointed for social housing of the time. The apartments were built for the , a
housing cooperative. It ordered the work at the beginning of 1930 and all five buildings were already finished by August of the same year. The construction costs were
RM 8,000 per apartment. Although the co-operative wanted the apartments to be inexpensive, it also wanted them to be well equipped and reasonably comfortable. The rent was to be controlled so that it was no more than a quarter of the occupant's income. All five apartment blocks still exist and they are still used as social housing. They were restored in the mid-1990s under historic protection criteria. Today they are owned and managed by the housing cooperative . One apartment is restored to its original design and is open to the public. The were inscribed as part of the World Heritage Site in July 2017. ==Bernau==