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The Bauhaus Building
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The Bauhaus building, home of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and the Kolleg, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was built in 1925/26 when the Bauhaus moved from Weimar to Dessau. It was the first time that the historical school had the chance to built a building to its own liking and it is the consequent implementation of the dictum "art and technology – a new unity".
The participants of the Kolleg live in studio, 2 or 3 bedroom apartments in the guest house of the Foundation, which is located approximately 20 walking minutes away from the Bauhaus in the south of Dessau.
See further pictures of the Bauhaus Building in the Gallery
Dessau - The Bauhaus City
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Dessau is a former industrial city in Saxony-Anhalt in eastern Germany. Wikipedia would doubtless also mention that there are two UNESCO World Heritage sites here, namely, the Bauhaus and the Dessau Wörlitzer Garden Realm.
That the city’s population has been in steady decline since 1990 would doubtless not be mentioned however, and nor would the fact that, in the wake of war, state urban planning throughout the socialist era and the transformations undergone since 1990, the city is fighting a hard battle to re-establish its profile, albeit one that will tend towards a mix of urban cores and rural zones.
Precisely therein lies perhaps the contradictory nature of a city that, caught by all appearances somewhat awkwardly between its Bauhaus architecture, disused industrial sites, reconstructed fragments of royal splendour and GDR concrete slab housing, plainly lacks an urban lifestyle. Life here unfolds rather, in allotments, parks, pubs and private living rooms or, on Sundays, in the Kornhaus on the River Elbe, the Bauhaus Club or in 18th century parks on the city’s outskirts.
Hence, few amongst its mostly, bicycle-riding residents would call this a beautiful city. Yet, the 'Bauhaus City' is green – the lack of urban entertainments can be compensated by intensive teamwork, a life at and for the Bauhaus, cycle tours along the Elbe and weekend trips to Berlin. And, as most participants in the Bauhaus Kolleg research teams discover during their ten months here, this curious city between Berlin and Leipzig has a way of putting itself indelibly on their map.
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