Bauhaus' Facelift

In 1919, Gropius (1883-1969) founded the Bauhaus art and design school in Weimar. The idea was to train artists, architects and craftsmen under one roof. His vision of the Bauhaus was as a workshop with an open atmosphere, permitting and facilitating exploration and experimentation. Modern industrial design and architecture were very much influenced by the Bauhaus principles of simple, pared-down elegance and functionality.

Big names, such as Gerhard Marcks and Lyonel Feininger, were on the faculty almost from the start. They were soon joined by Paul Klee, Vassily Kandinsky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who later succeeded Gropius.

From the outset, however, the progressive art and design movement came under attack by political conservatives. In 1926, a Nazi coalition took over the Thuringian assembly and withdrew funding from the school, forcing it eventually to leave Weimar. Dessau, in the heart of Saxony-Anhalt, was chosen over Frankfurt am Main and Mannheim as the relocation site.

Gropius designed the main Bauhaus faculty building and four "masters' houses" for him and his colleagues to live in. Uniting art and technology for functional purposes, the main glass, concrete and steel structure that incorporated straight horizontal and vertical lines and the Bauhaus logo, put the movement's ideas into practice. Although Dessau was badly damaged by wartime bombings, the Bauhaus buildings survived.

Archeology of modernism

The current executive director of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation is 58-year-old professor Omar Akbar. Born in Afghanistan, Akbar came to Germany when he was 11 and later studied in Berlin and Stuttgart.

Visibly pleased with the results, which would also have pleased the movement's founding-father, Akbar told reporters that the renovation process had involved a team painstakingly chipping away at several coats of paint before reaching the first layer.

Thanks to the skill of the restorers, many of the beautiful details in the building had re-emerged, including door panels with an art deco touch, artistic lighting features, and rounded metal slots for door handles in walls, he said.

The original subtle shades of burnt orange, acid-lemon, deep blue, and various pinks and reds had restored to the building an enhanced quality of warmth and space. The artificial separation walls, which had divided the light, spacious rooms, had been removed, and the built-in windows had been freed of concrete. The exterior black-and-whites had re-become gray-and-whites as intended.

"The work has in itself been an archeology of modernism," explained the professor, claiming an "entire work of art has been revealed through the restoration." In total, the restoration process took 10 years.

From art and design to urban development

In recent years, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation has focused on urban development issues, becoming involved in large-scale town-planning projects in Rio de Janeiro and in Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as in Saxony-Anhalt.

As part of the renovation process, stage activity at Dessau has also been reactivated. Musical and theatrical productions can now be held there as well as exhibitions.

Visitors to the revamped building can now leave the premises with a chunk of the original 1926 Bauhaus structure, helping themselves from a huge box of pieces of torfoleum, a material comprising impregnated peat used in the 1920s for insulation purposes.

An exhibition entitled "Icon of Modernism" which includes photos of the building before and after the restoration will run until March 2007. From spring 2007, there will be a permanent exhibition about the building and its artists that will include letters, architects' drawings, artworks, furniture and photos.

According to the foundation, roughly 80,000 people have visited the museum annually in the past few years, drawing Japanese and American tourists to the otherwise unremarkable city of Dessau. The building's 1996 nomination as a World Heritage Site and the renovation have increased its national and international significance.