One of the earliest and most radical colleges of art and design, the Bauhaus moved from Weimar to Dessau in 1925. Gropius (1883-1969) designed the campus as a working showcase for his theories about how art, design, and technology could work together to herald a new postwar sensibility.
As the storm clouds of a second world war gathered in Germany, Gropius left the Bauhaus in 1928 and returned to Berlin and private practice. In 1934 he emigrated to Britain, and in 1937 to the United States and Harvard. The Nazi regime closed the Bauhaus in 1933, yet the diaspora of its faculty and students guaranteed that Bauhaus ideas would influence design and architecture around the world for decades to come. For those who want to go to the source, some of the most tangible achievements of the Bauhaus survive intact in Dessau.
''It's an icon of modern architecture," Scheer said of Gropius's compact campus. In 1994, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation assumed stewardship of both the Bauhaus legacy and the Bauhaus buildings, which were damaged during the war, when they served as a school for women, a training facility for Nazi leaders, and even as an aircraft factory.
This year the foundation plans to complete a decade-long restoration of the buildings to the Bauhaus era and has started offering tours of the campus. Regularly scheduled guided tours are offered in German only, but an English language audio tour is available and allows visitors to proceed at their own pace.
Construction of Gropius's design was swift. Work began in September 1925 and the building was inaugurated in December 1926. The speed seems all the more remarkable, given the master's devotion to design details and his obsessive concern with how people would function in his space.
In the auditorium, for example, Gropius rejected conventional padded chairs in favor of sleek steel tube chairs with canvas seats and backs. Visitors can take a seat and confirm that the stripped-down design is comfortable enough to endure even the most long-winded lecture.
