Creative tension: new Bauhaus museum to be designed by architects with opposing styles
by Jak Phillips | 14 Sep 2015
An open competition to design a museum near the site of the iconic German art and design school Bauhaus has been jointly won by two teams of international architects.
The final proposal for the Bauhaus Museum will be developed by Spain-based architects Gonzalez Hinz Zabala with landscape firm Roser Vives de Delas, as well as Young & Ayata and Misako Murata from the US, after their designs were chosen from anonymously-presented submissions.
The open competition for the museum was launched in February 2015. The building is scheduled to be complete in 2019 to mark the 100th anniversary of the school’s opening, although it is unclear how the two designs will be developed to create a final proposal.
The Spanish vision for the Dessau-based museum is a long rectangular form with an external structural frame, as well as a black upper volume above a glazed street-level lower floor. Meanwhile the American team has developed a design consisting of a group of colourful conjoined pods that create walkways beneath and between their curved shapes.
Planned for a central location in the German town, the museum will sit in the city park to the south of the school building.
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It will include a spatial programme of 3,500sq m (37,674sq ft), with 2,100sq m (22,604sq ft) of exhibition space. It will hold the world’s second-largest collection of Bauhaus heritage material – approximately 40,000 objects.
Originally founded and directed by architect Walter Gropius in 1919, the school which taught modernist principles across art, architecture and graphic, interior and industrial design, was originally located in Weimar until it moved to Dessau between 1925 and 1932, followed by a year-long stint in Berlin.
Both the sites in Weimar and Dessau are World Heritage Sites. A Gropius-designed building on the site of the Dessau school currently serves as a museum in which visitor can spend the night in former student dormitories.
Chris Deacon, director of London’s Tate Modern who helped select the candidates as part of the jury, said the proposals were “very diverse.” “It will be a chance to start the discussion in the international public and with experts,” he said.
Bauhaus Dessau Foundation director Claudia Perren added: “We consciously decided for an open, anonymous announcement, to offer young offices and international architects a real chance.”
The building is scheduled to be complete in 2019 to mark the 100th anniversary of the school’s opening Credit: Gonzalez Hinz Zabala
The Spanish vision for the Dessau-based museum is a long rectangular form with an external structural frame Credit: Gonzalez Hinz Zabala
Credit: Young & Ayata
The conjoined pods create walkways beneath and between their curved shapes Credit: Young & Ayata
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An open competition to design a museum near the site of the iconic German art and design school Bauhaus has been jointly won by two teams of international architects. The final proposal for the Bauhaus Museum will be developed by Spain-based architects Gonzalez Hinz Zabala with landscape firm Roser Vives de Delas, as well as Young & Ayata and Misako Murata from the US, after their designs were chosen from
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