The move from Weimar to Dessau gave the Bauhaus an opportunity to express its teaching in a purpose-built school. Walter Gropius’s private office planned the building with a team of associates and regional firms. It opened on December 4, 1926; the school’s own architecture department followed in 1927.
The workshop wing uses broad glass surfaces to reveal the activity and structure within. Steel, concrete and glass establish the building’s character, but color is equally important. Hinnerk Scheper’s mural painting workshop developed a scheme that helped people find their way and changed the apparent relationships between walls, ceilings and adjoining spaces.
The school’s workshops also supplied the interior. Marcel Breuer’s tubular steel furniture served the auditorium, dining room, director’s office and student studios. Marianne Brandt, Hans Przyrembel and Max Krajewsky designed lamps in the metal workshop. Together these elements made the building a working demonstration of the Bauhaus approach: architecture, objects and interior surfaces developed as related parts of daily use.
Le Corbusier Villa Savoye, Poissy
