The Original Bauhaus Masters’ Houses, Dessau

This is our third post on the Bauhaus site in Dessau. Our visit was made during the centenary year (2019) of the founding of the Bauhaus School of Design.

For this post, try a 2020 collaboration by the brothers Eno – Mixing Colours

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A lot of the academic-sounding text in these Bauhaus posts were partially taken from our purchased books, pamphlets we picked up on site, as well as the copious volumes of writings on the internet, particularly https://www.bauhaus-dessau.de/en/index.html.

In 1926, in addition to the Bauhaus school building, the city of Dessau commissioned Walter Gropius to construct three pairs of identical semi-detached houses for the Bauhaus instructors (Meisterhaus, each housing 2 families) and a detached house for the director (Direktorenhaus).

These were built in a small pine wood on the street now known as the Ebertallee. The houses are about 10 minutes walk from the Bauhaus Building (our earlier post is here).

The semi-detached houses take the form of interlocking cubic structures of various heights, flat-roofed while vertical strip windows on the sides let light into the staircases.  The light-colored have generously-sized terraces and balconies and feature colorful accents on large, black-framed windows, the undersides of the balconies, and the drainpipes.  The equality of each duplex was guaranteed by simply rotating the design for the first segment and then building the second half at a ninety-degree angle.

Although they were designed in the 1920’s, they still look modern to our eyes – are they the timeless classics that the media adores ? and have we (the masses) been conditioned to recognize them as such ?

Gropius planned to build the complex based on a modular principle, using industrially prefabricated components. In view of the technical resources available at the time, apparently his plan was only partially realized.

With their white, cubic structures and complex connections between exteriors and interiors the houses showed the way forward for modern architecture and testified to the debate about standardization in housing construction.

The list of residents reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of modernists: László Moholy-Nagy and Lyonel Feininger in one house, Georg Muche and Oskar Schlemmer in another, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee in the third.  Walter Gropius occupied the Director’s House – the first house one sees when coming from the school’s direction.

For the color design of the interiors, artists such as Klee and Kandinsky developed own ideas that were closely related to their works.  Klee and Kandinsky used their white-walled homes as blank canvases for the color experiments, painting their interior spaces in almost two hundred colors, that came to light only upon restoration.  The dusty pink/purple room below was Paul Klee’s bedroom !  I (Chris) am a long-time fan of Klee’s work – in the 80’s, I bought a postcard of a painting by him with this color scheme. So this visit was particularly meaningful.

The Kandinsky/Klee Master House was reopened to visitors on 18 April 2019 after extensive restoration.  It was quite an experience for us to be able to walk through the life of Bauhaus masters in the surroundings they created for themselves. We watched all the videos running in the houses, which documented their activities.

All of the houses were fitted with built-in space-saving closets, wardrobes and cupboards, and modern (at the time) household appliances. The furnishings complied with the requirements for optimum day light exposure, ventilation, easy-to-clean surfaces and ergonomic working height.  Much of these modern simple comforts are taken for granted by us now but it must have been quite revolutionary in the 1920’s.

Gropius was interested in reforming the household. Notably, the toilet is separate from the bathroom.  The kitchen where meals are prepared is separated from the dish-washing area, and the dining room.

Others who lived here later, include Hannes Meyer (the next director after Gropius), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (the third director), Josef Albers, Hinnerk Scheper and Alfred Arndt.

This ensemble of Masters’ houses is the epitome of the artists’ colony of the 20th century.

The Director’s House and the Moholy-Nagy/Feininger were destroyed during World War II.  See the rebuilding of these two houses on our next post.

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