Bauhaus and Gropius - The model house from 1923
- Written by Portal Editor
After our visit to the “Roman House” in the park on the Ilm, Georg Muche's single-family house from Bauhaus architecture, which was hyper-modern for the time, was of course at the top of our list of interests.
Georg Muche's model house is the only building from the Bauhaus architecture realized in Weimar. It was built for the first major Bauhaus exhibition in 1923.
Bauhaus & Walter Gropius art and architecture school
The most important art and architecture school of the 20th century, the Bauhaus, which was founded with the appointment of Walter Gropius as director on April 1, 1919, created with this building its only architectural testimony in the Goethe city. As a forerunner of modern living ideas, the revolutionary ideas of the Bauhaus first materialized here. Whether weaving, lighting or furniture – in the “Am Horn” house, the influential design school was comprehensively involved and at the same time demonstrated its pioneering position. As a prototype of modern living, the aim was to make the rooms small and functional. The focus was the central living room, to which all other rooms were connected in a honeycomb manner.
UNESCO World Heritage “Bauhaus and its sites in Weimar, Dessau and Bernau
In Weimar, the “House am Horn” was only laughed at over 100 years ago. Many people reacted with incomprehension to the completely unfamiliar way of building. The Bauhaus artists had planned an entire settlement of comparable objects on this slope, in the immediate vicinity of Goethe's garden house. Due to financial difficulties, only this one building was built. Just two years later, the Bauhaus moved to Dessau.
The "Haus Am Horn" is now part of the UNESCO World Heritage “Bauhaus and its sites in Weimar, Dessau and Bernau”. It was awarded the European Heritage Prize / Europa Nostra Award in 2021. The model home was recognized in the preservation category because it represents residential development in the 20th century.
The design of the open space with the restored vegetable garden provides information about the new, experimental way of life proposed by the early Bauhaus.
Although equal rights for women were promoted at the Bauhaus, female students had limited access to various disciplines. They were mostly housed in the textile workshop, which was therefore also called the women's department. At the first Bauhaus, only a few women were able to overcome this discrimination and work, for example, in the metal workshop.
The Haus am Horn, the first model house of the Bauhaus, was recreated in 2018 by artist Daniel Theiler for the Weimar Art Festival from textiles, the most common material used by women at the early Bauhaus. The patchwork of patterned fabric panels was a cheerful statement of equality.
Five years after it was first installed, the work was installed in the park on the Ilm in 2023 at the invitation of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar as part of the theme year of living and for the 100th birthday of the Haus am Horn. The artist consciously decided not to equip the work of art with new materials, but rather to accept the signs of the times.
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