The Bauhaus Museum
100 years after Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus, a Bauhaus museum has been created in Dessau
By Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Bauhaus Museum Dessau, exterior view, 7.9.2019 (2019) by addenda architects (Gonzalez Hinz Zabala) and Thomas Meyer (Photo)Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
The opening of the new Bauhaus Museum Dessau is one of the highlights of the Bauhaus-centenary year in 2019. It means that the whole of the valuable collection of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation can now be displayed to the public for the first time.
Bauhaus Building (1925-26), architect: Walter Gropius, view from South West, 2018 (2018) by Walter Gropius (Architecture) and Yakob Israel Willmington-Lu (Photo)Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
The Bauhaus enjoyed its heyday in Dessau. From 1925 to 1932 the 20th Century’s most famous avant-garde school was based here. But up to now it has only been possible to show the history of the Bauhaus in Dessau to a very limited extent in the Bauhaus building ...
... that Walter Gropius had built in 1925-26.
Its striking glass facade ...
... and asymmetrical form and concentration on pure functionality make the Bauhaus building one of the icons of modern architecture. It has been a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site since 1996. But this means that it has to meet stringent requirements, making it unsuitable as a museum.
Exhibition "Versuchsstätte Bauhaus. The Collection", Bauhaus Museum Dessau, 8.9.2019 (2019) by Exhibition design: chezweitz and Thomas Meyer (Photo)Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
The new museum has 2,100 m² of exhibition space, of which 1,500 m² are in the closed cube with no daylight, where the world’s second-largest collection of Bauhaus artefacts can be shown. With a total area of 3,500 m² the museum has plenty of room for all kinds of presentations.
Walk of the objects from the Bauhaus building to the construction site of the Bauhaus Museum Dessau, 4.12.2016 (2016) by Thomas Ruttke (Photo)Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation houses some 49,000 objects ...
... which are here being moved symbolically into the new museum.
Architectural art, Lucy Raven: Lichtspielhaus, Bauhaus Museum Dessau, 8.9.2020 (2019) by addenda architects (Gonzalez Hinz Zabala) and Thomas Meyer (Photo)Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
The museum is an open stage for contemporary standpoints and rotating temporary exhibitions, a transparent corpus uniting interior and exterior, city and museum.
Bauhaus Museum Dessau, exterior view, 7.9.2019 (2019) by addenda architects (Gonzalez Hinz Zabala) and Thomas Meyer (Photo)Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
And at its heart is the hermetic black box housing the collection.
"Bauhaus Museum Dessau" Exhibition on the International Architecture Competition, Opening, Bauhaus Dessau, 29.10.2015 (2015)Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
This is the concept that won the Spanish firm addenda architects the open international competition in 2015, for which a total of 831 designs were entered. All the prizewinning models were on display in the Bauhaus building from November 2015 to January 2016.
Bauhaus Museum Dessau (2017)Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
Here the Director of the Dessau Bauhaus, Dr. Claudia Perren, explains why Dessau needs its own Bauhaus museum and why she was won over by the design of the architecture collective around the young architects Roberto González, Anne Hinz and José Zabala.
Topping-out ceremony Bauhaus Museum Dessau, construction site, 9.8.2018 (2018)Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
The contract is the first big project for addenda architects. Roberto González finds that the way they work together as a team and approach architecture is completely in keeping with the idea of the Bauhaus:
Bauhaus Museum Dessau, exterior view, 7.9.2019 (2019) by addenda architects (Gonzalez Hinz Zabala) and Thomas Meyer (Photo)Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
In addenda architects five architects come together who have common experiences but at the same time diverging skills and interests and are united in a common goal – for them, the social interaction the building enables is more important than other aspects of design.
Bauhaus Museum Dessau (2017)Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
The architect Roberto González on his visions of a contemporary museum building, which worthily receives and represents the Bauhaus heritage.
Bauhaus Museum Dessau, construction site tour, construction site, 14.6.2018 (2018)Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
The museum is on a site in the heart of the city. The foundation stone was laid in December 2016, exactly 90 years after the opening of the Bauhaus building. Visitors were able to join in with the site inspection in June 2018.
Topping-out ceremony Bauhaus Museum Dessau, construction site, 9.8.2018 (2018)Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
The topping out ceremony in August 2018, with critical looks by the Director and the architect at the shell construction of the new build which is costing 28 million euros, to be borne equally by the federal government and the state of Saxony-Anhalt.
Bauhaus Museum Dessau (2017)Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
Frank Assmann, head of the construction department, on the character of the museum.
Construction Site Bauhaus Museum Dessau, 5.10.2018 (2018) by addenda architects (González Hinz Zabala)Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
Steel shelves inspired by industrial production and the essential feel of a workshop evoke and continue the idea of the historic Bauhaus.
The surface is raw concrete, the stairs have steel handrails, and what is very important is the transparent view from the ground floor of both outside and inside.
Construction Site Bauhaus Museum Dessau, 5.10.2018 (2018) by addenda architects (González Hinz Zabala)Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
Part of the glass facade was assembled in October 2018, just under a year before the opening. The interior construction and the moving in of the exhibits followed in 2019.
The exhibition
Utopia and everyday life – in the 1920s the Bauhaus members searched for ways to shape life in a new and modern way. Teachers and students were drawn to the famous avant-garde school from all over the world. For seven years the Bauhaus in Dessau was a place of vitality, of artistic experimentation and of work on industrial prototypes. And although the school only existed for a mere 14 years, with stays in Weimar and, later, in Berlin, the modernity of the Bauhaus has made a mark on our everyday life up to the present. The exhibition ‘Versuchsstätte Bauhaus. The Collection’ tells its story with the furniture, lamps, textiles and works of fine art which were once created here.
Untitled (material relief, exercise from preliminary course with László Moholy-Nagy) (1927) by Franz EhrlichBauhaus Dessau Foundation
In all, well over 1,000 objects are on display, including in a special section the 148 objects with which the Foundation started its collection in 1976.
They show visions and concepts, working practices and methods, ideas and everyday life, actors and networks of the Bauhaus.
Exhibition "Versuchsstätte Bauhaus. The Collection", Bauhaus Museum Dessau, 8.9.2019 (2019) by Exhibition design: chezweitz and Thomas Meyer (Photo)Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
Temporary exhibitions expand the Bauhaus as an experimental laboratory and continue the story on a regularly changing basis.
Architectural art, Lucy Raven: Lichtspielhaus, Bauhaus Museum Dessau, 8.9.2020 (2019) by addenda architects (Gonzalez Hinz Zabala) and Thomas Meyer (Photo)Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
The new Bauhaus Museum Dessau is intended from now on to unite the unique Bauhaus buildings in Dessau – the masters’ houses, the Kornhaus, the Bauhaus housing estate in Dessau-Törten and the Bauhaus building itself – as an independent, contemporary site.
It will offer the opportunity to establish the museum as a new cultural centre for the city with discussions, films and concerts, where visitors and residents of the city can come together.
Text / Concept / Realisation: Astrid Alexander
Editing: Astrid Alexander, Cornelia Jeske
Translation: Catherine Hales, Stephan Schmidt
Video: Leuthner Filmproduktion München
© Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
www.bauhaus-dessau.de
