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Posts tagged ‘Walter Gropius’

Konsumgebäude, Siedlung Törten, Bauhaussiedlung Dessau–Törten, Törten, Dessau Törten, Dessau-Süd, Bauhaus, Bauhaus100, Dessau, Dessau-Rosslau, Saxony-Anhalt, Sachsen-Anhalt, Deutschland, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday: Dessau Konsum Building (Törten Estate)

Part 3 of 4, Dessau modernism in architecture: Törten Estate.

2019 marks the 100th anniversary of Bauhaus. The Bauhaus art school began life first in Weimar between 1919 and 1925, moved to Dessau between 1925 and 1932, and ended in Berlin from 1932 and 1933 before the Nazis forced the school to close for good.

In 1926, the city of Dessau had commissioned Martin Gropius to design and build some 300 housing units in Törten, a village in the city’s southern extent, to relieve the housing shortage. The construction was not a Bauhaus project, but included materials and construction methods for the project to be built as quickly and cheaply as possible. The five-storey Konsumgebäude (Konsum Building) acted not only as “high rise” landmark for the horizontally aligned terrace houses in the housing estate, but acted also as community centre which included a food cooperative, a butcher’s shop, café, and laundry. The ground floor now hosts an information centre with descriptions regarding the Törten Housing Estate (which is not included in Dessau’s UNESCO World Heritage Site).

Thanks to IMG- and Sachsen-Anhalt-Tourismus and the city of Dessau-Rosslau for their patronage and access to facilities, and the City-Pension Dessau-Rosslau for their hospitality. IMG- and Sachsen-Anhalt-Tourismus supported my visit to the German federal state of Saxony-Anhalt from 25 October to 3 November 2016 inclusive. I made the photo above on 28 October 2016 with a Canon EOS6D and the following settings: 1/500-sec, f/8, ISO1000, and 35mm focal length. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins.com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-dH5.

Meisterhäuster, Gropiushaus, Masters Houses, Gropius House, Bauhaus, Bauhaus100, Dessau, Dessau-Rosslau, Saxony-Anhalt, Sachsen-Anhalt, Deutschland, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday: Dessau Masters’ Houses (Bauhaus100)

Part 2 of 4, Dessau Bauhaus.

2019 marks the 100th anniversary of Bauhaus. The Bauhaus art school began life first in Weimar between 1919 and 1925, moved to Dessau between 1925 and 1932, and ended in Berlin from 1932 and 1933 before the Nazis forced the school to close for good.

About 500 metres north from the Bauhaus headquarters building are four structures Martin Gropius designed for the Bauhaus Masters: a single family house and three duplex houses. UNESCO inscribed the Masters’ Houses and the Bauhaus headquarters building as part of a single Bauhaus World Heritage Site in 1996.

Thanks to IMG- and Sachsen-Anhalt-Tourismus and the city of Dessau-Rosslau for their patronage and access to facilities, and the City-Pension Dessau-Rosslau for their hospitality. IMG- and Sachsen-Anhalt-Tourismus supported my visit to the German federal state of Saxony-Anhalt from 25 October to 3 November 2016 inclusive. I made the photo above on 28 October 2016 with a Canon EOS6D and the following settings: 1/250-sec, f/5, ISO1000, and 24mm focal length. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins.com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-dGW.

Bauhaus headquarters, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, Bauhaus, Bauhaus 100, Dessau, Saxony-Anhalt, Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday: Dessau Bauhaus Building (Bauhaus100)

Part 1 of 4, Dessau Bauhaus.

2019 marks the 100th anniversary of Bauhaus. The Bauhaus art school began life first in Weimar between 1919 and 1925, moved to Dessau between 1925 and 1932, and ended in Berlin from 1932 and 1933 before the Nazis forced the school to close for good.

Designed by Martin Gropius, the Bauhaus headquarters building opened in Dessau in 1926. For the building’s steel and glass construction, it’s considered a follow-on of Gropius’ design of the Fagus shoe-last factory complex (1911) in Alfeld. UNESCO inscribed the Bauhaus headquarters building and the Masters’ Houses (down the street) as part of a single Bauhaus World Heritage Site in 1996.

Thanks to IMG- and Sachsen-Anhalt-Tourismus and the city of Dessau-Rosslau for their patronage and access to facilities, and the City-Pension Dessau-Rosslau for their hospitality. IMG- and Sachsen-Anhalt-Tourismus supported my visit to the German federal state of Saxony-Anhalt from 25 October to 3 November 2016 inclusive. I made the photo above on 28 October 2016 with a Canon EOS6D and the following settings: 1/500-sec, f/5, ISO1000, and 32mm focal length. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins.com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-dGC.

Before Bauhaus: Alfeld Fagus Factory, UNESCO WHS

Before Bauhaus found its first footing in Weimar, there was in the town of Alfeld in central Germany the Fagus-Werk factory building.

The Fagus factory building is looked upon as the first building in the world for the modern architectural age, and is the predecessor to the elegant 1926 Bauhaus headquarters building in Dessau. Fagus company founder Karl Benscheidt commissioned architect and future Bauhaus founder, Walter Gropius, to create and build a shoe-making factory as an artistic project. Gropius and his collaborator Adolf Meyer stuck with working floor-plans by architect Eduard Werner, and set their sights on new exterior and interior designs. Completed in 1911, the factory’s office building set a new standard for 20th-century industrial architecture with steel and glass construction and tall unsupported windows at the corners of the building.

“Fagus” is Latin for “beech tree”, and shoemaking began with shoe lasts or moulds constructed from beech wood, which were sold and distributed around the world to other companies for the productions of shoes. In the 1920s, Benscheidt developed the turning precision-lathe speeding up production, prompting growth and expansion and elevating the company to world’s top producer of shoe lasts. Today, the building is still a working factory: Fagus creates plastic lasts milled by automated machinery to precise specifications for specific designs by shoe companies. Also on-site is GreCon which produces systems for fire-detection and fire-extinguishing in industrial settings. The Fagus factory building was recognized as “unique living monument” and inscribed by UNESCO as World Heritage Site (Welterbe) in 2011.

With a population of over 20-thousand people, Alfeld is located in the German federal state of Lower Saxony. The town’s reach by train is 30-minutes from Hannover or 40-minutes from Göttingen, after which is a short 5- to 10-minute walk from Alfeld(Leine)1 train station to the entrance of the Fagus/GreCon complex. Visitors can walk around the working factory site, stop at the World Heritage Site Visitor Centre, sit in the neighbouring café for coffee or tea, and visit the museum dedicated to the building’s origins, the building’s century-long history of shoe-making, and a general history of footwear.

Walter Gropius and others would move to Weimar to establish a centre of art, design, thought, and attitude for Bauhaus in 1919, eight years after inauguration of the Fagus-Werk.

Die Baukunst soll ein Spiegel des Lebens und der Zeit sein.
(Architecture should be a mirror to life and its time.)

– Walter Gropius.

( Click here for images and more )

Dessau: The Bauhaus Building, UNESCO WHS

21st-century Modernity, from 1919 on

The chair or couch on which you sit.
The table on which you’re resting your mobile or pad.
The desk on which your laptop or desktop resides.
The light fixture on your desk or above your head.
The windows in your room, your house, or in the cafĂ© where you’re reading this.

The “universal” idea of living in a house or apartment with the furnishings we all take for granted from bathroom to bedroom and kitchen to living room is a relatively young idea by historical standards. It’s easy to imagine a time where only the rich upper-class could afford and were allowed to have and live in heated furnished residences, and the poor lower-class lived in unheated homes under damp dirty squalid conditions. Past designs with its heavy stone, porcelain, and ornate decorative components gave way to steel, glass, lightness of space, to favouring function over form. Simpler designs were meant to provide universal access: to the home, and to the essentials which furnished the home.

( Click here for images and more )

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