Bauhaus Museum Dessau by Addenda Architects – All photos by Photo by Thomas Meyer, unless stated.

Bauhaus – Barcelona studio Addenda Architects has opened the Bauhaus Museum Dessau in Germany. Dessau is the former home of the iconic architecture and design movement founded by Walter Gropius exactly 100 years ago. The museum comes in the shape of a simple glass block located in the centre of the town where the visionary Bauhaus school was based between 1925 and 1932.

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The 5,500 sqm museum comprises an open ground floor for temporary exhibitions and a floating “black box”, which contains gallery space to display delicate items from the Bauhaus collection. The studio did not intend to directly replicate Bauhaus architecture with its design.

“Our basic concept for the museum was to create a large, flexible space so that exhibitions and workshops can take place without feeling restricted in any way by the architecture,” said Roberto González, one of the founders of Addenda Architects.

On the ground floor, visitors are welcomed to the Open Stage, a central area containing the museum’s entrance hall, ticket desk, cafe, shop and 600 square-metres of temporary exhibition space. Here also a flexible space located between the two stairwells hosting offices under the cantilever at the building’s northern end, as well as education spaces at the southern end.

Constructed from a 100-metre-long concrete tube, the black box is designed to provide optimal conditions to preserve sensitive items in the collection and has no natural light. “[It] hovers five metres above visitors’ heads. It is always there, always present – like the legacy of the historic Bauhaus.” Explains González.

It is supported solely by two stairwells and sits five metres above the open ground floor, with a 50-metre central span and 18-metre cantilevers at each end. The building has a uniform exterior with all four sides of the building entirely clad in triple-glazed panels that are arranged on a 2.1-metre grid. It is topped with a green roof.

Photo by Hartmut Boesener.

All photos by Thomas Meyer, unless stated.