The Bauhaus Building by Walter Gropius (1925-26)

Foto: Rudivan L Cattani

Edificio de la Bauhaus, 1925-1926 by Walter Gropius

The Bauhaus originated in Weimar in 1919 as a new type of design school. In 1924, when further work in Weimar became impossible, the Bauhaus offered itself up to other towns. That Dessau, an aspiring industrial city in central Germany, was chosen by the Bauhaus Masters over Frankfurt am Main, for example, depended in part on the fact that it could offer the Bauhaus a new school building. Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus in 1919 and its director until 1928, designed the building on behalf of the city of Dessau and in cooperation with Carl Fieger, Ernst Neufert and others in his private architectural practice – the Bauhaus did not have its own department of architecture until 1927. The Bauhaus workshops were integrated within the building’s interior design. The city of Dessau provided money for the new school building on a development site close to the train station and also for the Masters' Houses, and remained the owner of both properties.

In his design, Walter Gropius refined architectonic ideas he first put into practice before WW I in the construction of the Fagus-Werke in Alfeld an der Leine. In Dessau as in Alfeld, the glass curtain wall suspended in front of the load-bearing framework defines the exterior of the workshop wing and openly shows the constructive elements. Gropius, rather than visually amplifying the corners of the cubic body of the building, allowed the glass surface to overlap the edges, thereby creating the impression of lightness.