After political pressure in Weimar threatened the school’s funding and future, the Bauhaus searched for a new sponsor. In 1925, the industrial city of Dessau agreed to take it on, reshaping it into a more city-supported institution focused on modern design for industry.
In March 1925, Walter Gropius’s office was commissioned to design a new shared complex for the Bauhaus and Dessau’s arts-and-crafts/technical schools. This decision set the stage for one of the most influential modern school buildings of the 20th century.
In September 1925, construction started on the new Bauhaus building in Dessau. The project embodied the school’s push toward “art and technology,” using modern materials and planning aimed at efficient, industrial-era production.
In 1925–1926, Dessau commissioned a group of residences for leading Bauhaus teachers, later known as the Masters’ Houses. Beyond housing, they served as showpieces for modern construction and everyday life, demonstrating functional planning and new domestic standards.
On March 21, 1926, the Bauhaus in Dessau held a topping-out ceremony, a traditional milestone signaling that the main structure was largely finished. The event marked visible progress toward a purpose-built home for the school’s workshops, classrooms, and student housing.
In 1926, Dessau launched the Dessau-Törten Housing Estate under Gropius, aiming for affordable homes built with rationalized, cost-saving methods. The project tested serial (repeatable) construction and prefabricated elements, bringing Bauhaus ideas into real city housing needs.
On December 4, 1926, the new Bauhaus complex in Dessau was officially inaugurated. Its workshop wing’s glass curtain wall, bridge offices, and the Prellerhaus student studios became a clear architectural statement about transparency, function, and modern life.
The school used publishing to spread its ideas beyond Dessau. The first issue of the Bauhaus design journal was tied to the opening of the new complex and showcased Gropius’s building, helping define how Bauhaus typography and graphic design communicated modernism.
As the Dessau phase developed, the Bauhaus formalized architecture teaching more directly than it had in Weimar. By 1927, Hannes Meyer was leading the architecture program, strengthening the link between design education and building projects.
In 1928, Walter Gropius stepped down as director, and Hannes Meyer took over. Under Meyer, the school emphasized “needs” and social purpose, pushing further toward functional design tied to measurable requirements like cost and use.
In 1928, the Bauhaus won a major commission outside Dessau: the ADGB Trade Union School in Bernau near Berlin. Designed under Meyer with Hans Wittwer, it became a large-scale test of Bauhaus planning—integrating classrooms, housing, and landscape in a unified complex.
Between 1929 and 1930, the Bauhaus building department under Meyer designed the Laubenganghäuser (“balcony access houses”) as part of expanding the Dessau-Törten area. The project was both housing and teaching: students and staff treated real construction as a practical classroom for modern, economical living.
Political conflict around the school intensified as Germany’s politics polarized. In 1930, Hannes Meyer was dismissed, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was appointed director, shifting the school toward stricter discipline and a more architecture-centered approach.
After the NSDAP gained political power in Dessau, the city dissolved the Bauhaus as an institution there. On September 30, 1932, the Bauhaus Dessau was officially dissolved, and the school’s leaders organized a move to Berlin—ending the Dessau chapter that had produced its most famous buildings.
Bauhaus School in Dessau (1925–1932)