The Competition
Though partly destroyed, the Bauhaus Building and the Masters’ Houses in Dessau, Germany, have been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1996. In 2010, a competition was held to generate new ideas for the Masters' Houses, which were originally designed by architect Walter Gropius in 1925-26.
As part of the brief, we were asked to give particular consideration to two of the missing houses: the Moholy-Nagy House and the Gropius House. We were also asked to consider the urban design and landscape of the entire complex, including the perimeter wall and the former refreshment kiosk by Mies van der Rohe.
Left: an aerial view of the site showing the Masters' Houses complex in orange, with House Gropius on the far right).
Right: House Gropius as it appeared in 1926.
The current post-war house on the site of the original House Gropius.
We carried out an exercise to remove the 1956 house, leaving the garage, basement and terrace.
We reinstated the volume of original house in a translucent envelope.
We built within this envelope a new contemporary solid volume, for exhibitions, concerts and talks.
We considered projecting the 1926 photographs onto the translucent volume.