Clear shapes, soft lines and the use of industrial steel and glass characterise the buildings of the Bauhaus movement. And these are the five most interesting buildings.
Walter Gropius founded Bauhaus as a design and architecture school in 1919. His most important guiding principle: ‘Form follows function.’ This means that Bauhaus designs are aesthetic, functional and suitable for mass production. It marked the beginning of a modern aesthetic that continues to inspire design and architecture to this day.
5. BauhausDessau
The most famous Bauhaus building is located at Gropiusallee 38 in Dessau: the Bauhaus School. Walter Gropius designed it after moving from Weimar to Dessau and opened it in 1926. The result was a building that made revolutionary use of new materials. The workshop has an imposing steel and glass façade. The interior design, featuring steel tube furniture by Marcel Breuer, also set new standards. Possible collaborations with industry were taken into account in the design. Today, the Bauhaus School in Dessau is open to visitors. In the former studio building, visitors can stay overnight in the rooms of former students. For our modern understanding of design, recent architectural history and the industrial consumption of goods – such as furniture, lamps and kitchens – Bauhaus was and remains an internationally influential design movement that was able to unfold its full potential for the first time in the building in Dessau.
4. Masters' housesDessau
Not far from the Bauhaus school are the so-called Masters' Houses. They served as residences for the Bauhaus masters. The buildings were both demonstration and experimental objects. Here, too, the guiding principle of ‘form follows function’ was at the heart of the planning. For the first time, rooms such as kitchens and bathrooms were arranged and furnished according to their function and hygienic aspects. At the time of their construction in 1925/26, hot water, heating and modern kitchen appliances were anything but commonplace. For Gropius, the three identical semi-detached houses and one detached house were something like experimental laboratories for modular, prefabricated construction. The houses were home to celebrities such as Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, and later Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The colourful interior design by Kandinsky and Klee, with its unmistakable artistic signature, can still be seen today.
3. Liebling houseTel Aviv
When the National Socialists came to power in Germany, many Jewish architects were forced to flee. Many settled in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine, now Israel. With them came the Bauhaus style to the region. In Tel Aviv, in the White City, there are still more than a thousand buildings in the Bauhaus style. One of them was built by the Liebling family in 1936 at 29 Rechov Idelson by architect Dov Karmi. Today, the Liebling House serves as a museum and archive of Bauhaus architecture and, thanks to its good condition, is a prime example in the middle of the White City.
2. Weißenhof-Siedlung housesStuttgart
The Weissenhof-Siedlung houses in Stuttgart were built in 1927 as part of the exhibition Die Wohnung (The Dwelling) in just six months under the artistic direction of Mies van der Rohe. Seventeen architects designed a model estate with 21 houses containing a total of 63 flats, furnished by 55 international interior designers. The project offered an unprecedented field of experimentation for modern living and building. The semi-detached house by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret has been a World Heritage Site since 2016 and now houses the Weissenhof Museum. The two single-family houses designed by Walter Gropius fell victim to bombing during the Second World War. Today, ten of the 21 buildings remain. The Weissenhof-Siedlung houses are considered the dawn of modern architecture and an exciting witness to the Bauhaus movement.
1. Gropius HouseMassachusetts
The house at 68 Baker Bridge Road in Lincoln, Massachusetts, USA, was the home of Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius from 1938, after his escape from Germany, until his death in 1969. He had designed it entirely according to his own ideas. The ‘fusion of regional spirit with a contemporary design approach’ was particularly important to him. According to his own statements, Gropius would ‘never have built’ such a house in Europe due to the need to adapt to the geographical and climatic conditions of the location. In fact, traditional materials such as brick and wood can be found in the house, but the modern signature of the Bauhaus luminary is nevertheless clearly visible. The private use of the building by the Bauhaus master himself makes it the most interesting of all Bauhaus projects for many people.
