The workshop will focus on three project sites. The sites are outlined in detail here by the Bauhaus Foundation, Dessau:
1) Dessau Törten, Anton House
In Dessau in the 1920s, Social Democratic Party politicians saw rationalised housing construction as an opportunity to combat the booming industrial town’s acute housing shortage. The Dessau Törten estate was built as an experimental development with three different types of houses in order to provide cheap housing, with kitchen gardens, for blue- and white-collar workers, and at the same time answer the call for increased self-sufficiency in a crisis-riven Weimar Republic. Over the course of the 20th century, the occupants of the houses, who freely adapted their homes according to their very own needs, countered the dictates of the series. And while tourists turned away in disappointment over the years, their expectations of the white planned city, reproduced in photographs worldwide, spoiled by the tenants’ handiwork, a reassessment, post-1990, of the estate, can be observed and even citizens of Dessau are rediscovering living with Gropius in Törten. Anton House, a Type 1 building, was erected in 1926 in a double row of houses and restored according to the precepts of monument conservation after 2000. Anton House complements the information centre about Törten which recently opened in the Konsum Building: while the latter presents detailed information about the estate, industrial housing and housing projects in Dessau, Anton House offers insight into the housing tradition of the neighbourhood. Prototype furniture designed in the Bauhaus workshops can be exhibited in a living space in the basement; here, Törten stands at the centre of the narration as a paradigmatic locus of a modern way of living as it was shaped by the Bauhaus. By contrast, the kitchen is presented as a lived-in space, as it was kept by Frau Anton, the last tenant. There are no plans, to date, for the rooms on the upper floor.
2) Masters’ Houses
The ensemble of Masters’ Houses was built in 1926, comprising three duplexes and a detached house based on a variation of a basic type. Designed by Walter Gropius for the Bauhaus’ masters, the dimensions and spatial programming broadly reflect the housing needs of the middle classes. While the three duplexes served mainly as studios for artists such as Feininger, Klee and Kandinsky, Gropius’ house was a showcase for modern living. As a display of a future way of living, the Gropius Master’s House provides an interesting example of the interaction between media space and architecture in the modern age; in the film “Wie wohnen wir gesund und wirtschaftlich”, the attainments of technology for the rational organisation of the household were presented in the Gropius Master’s House and disseminated by the media. As early as the 1930s, the Masters’ Houses were redeveloped as residential properties, with smaller windows and changes to the floor plans. While the Gropius House and one half of a duplex were destroyed in 1945, the remaining buildings housed families and a public polyclinic. In the 1950s, a house with a pitched roof was built on the foundations of the former Gropius House. The Masters’ Houses were only renovated and given new usages after 1990. The debate about the Bauhaus’ legacy was fought more vociferously here, at the non-existent Gropius Master’s House, than at any other Bauhaus building in the city. Although the completion in 2012 of the ensemble of Masters’ Houses adopts the cubature of the Gropius House, it also sees itself as a contemporary commentary on the missing building. The history of the Masters’ Houses, of the three pairs of architects and the Bauhaus directors Gropius, Meyer and Mies van der Rohe, is to be elucidated in the interior space and in the remaining basement rooms. In the Masters’ Houses occupied by the artist duos, the aim is to strike a balance between the occupiers’ approach to these houses and the artworks that were created here.
3) Bauhaus Building: Director’s Room
The Director’s Room is found on the bridge of the Bauhaus Building. Within the scope of the Bauhaus’ comprehensive renovation project, Gropius’ room was restored, becoming part of the building’s museum section. The fitted cupboards, the colour design and floor design were all restored. The writing desk, chairs and shelving were reconstructed; no further pieces of original furniture exist. Today, the original writing desk is located in Gropius’ house in Lincoln, Mass. Gropius had already taken this along with him when he relocated to Berlin in 1928. Today, there are two reproductions in existence – in the Gropius Room in Weimar and in the Bauhaus Dessau. While the Director’s Room is integrated into the public guided tour of the building, it is not yet accessible to individual visitors (though there are plans to change this). In future, accessibility to the former Director’s Room could be improved by the addition of an adjoining room presenting information about it. To date, it remains to be seen how far a reconstruction of the historic interior should be taken, how the information mediated in the Director’s Room and the adjoining room is to be balanced, and how visitors should be managed without guided tours.
4) Bauhaus Building: Prellerhaus/Studio Building
The Studio Building had 26 rooms for students as well as shared sanitary and cooking facilities. The infrastructure of the Prellerhaus also includes an exercise room located beneath the stage. This part of the building is currently used as a guesthouse. The fitted cupboards, bed alcoves and other furnishings that defined the spatial structure of the Studio Building no longer exist. During the renovation project which was carried out up to 2006, a decision was therefore made to mark out the outlines of these installations on the floor. One room in the Studio Building may be viewed within the framework of public guided tours. In addition to giving an example of the way in which the students lived at the Bauhaus, the intention is to present the Prellerhaus as a communal form of housing in the context of the collective facilities also present in the Studio Building.
Regina Bittner, Bauhaus Foundation Dessau 2011
BAUHAUS, DESSAU 