Bauhaus-Museum, Weimar

The new Bauhaus Museum in Weimar is a state­ment. It has to stand its own in a tricky urban setting, slotted in between the former Gau­fo­rum and the Weimarhallen Park on a topo­graphic es­carp­ment with a dif­fer­ence in el­e­va­tion of just a few metres. Ar­chi­tect Heike Hanada put a mono­lithic cube in this dis­or­gan­ised, his­tor­i­cally dif­fi­cult lo­ca­tion, at a slight di­ag­o­nal from the im­pos­ing shadow of the Gau­fo­rum. It’s a bold state­ment that finally es­tab­lishes a promi­nent place in the city for the Bauhaus on its 100th birth­day. The ex­te­rior exudes a certain hard­ness with an en­ve­lope of exposed con­crete. Hor­i­zon­tal slits give struc­ture to the facades, and the let­ter­ing and strip light­ing em­pha­sise these further.

With very few, small windows, the build­ing appears en­cap­su­lated: its purpose is to protect fragile col­lec­tion arte­facts and gen­er­ous day­light is in­com­pat­i­ble with this aim. The ar­chi­tect sub­scribes to a lib­er­ated ap­proach to mod­ernism that does away with certain taboos and works with a base, parapet and cor­nices, with ver­ti­cal open­ings and solid reveals. Hanada wants to use this ar­chi­tec­tural ap­proach as a way to connect to the era of early mod­ernism in Weimar, when Walter Gropius founded the art school. ‘We are not repli­cat­ing the classic Bauhaus look. Instead, we are trying to land in that in-be­tween state between clas­si­cism, Ju­gend­stil and the de­vel­op­ment of mod­ernism,’ she says in a con­ver­sa­tion with FSB.

‘This in­ter­me­di­ary con­di­tion had a real impact on Gropius – he came to Weimar as a suc­ces­sor of Henry van der Velde to a school heavily in­flu­enced by the Ju­gend­stil move­ment. In a rel­a­tively short time, he de­vel­oped a new per­spec­tive. It was an ex­cit­ing period.’

Inside gives an en­tirely dif­fer­ent im­pres­sion: all five storeys are three-di­men­sion­ally in­ter­locked by airy dou­ble-height rooms and large open­ings in the walls. The lower floor opens to the park via a terrace, while the en­trance is located one floor up and faces the Gau­fo­rum. Cas­cades of steps, offset slightly from floor to floor, connect the in­di­vid­ual levels.
The ‘Stair­way to Heaven’ runs along one of the facades, a linear stair­way that leads vis­i­tors from the top floor back to the bottom. The ma­te­ri­als used in the new museum are note­wor­thy. It fea­tures ribbed ceil­ings of openly exposed con­crete, with lights, ven­ti­la­tion and acoustic el­e­ments in­stalled in the re­cesses.

Heike Hanada chose not to plaster the con­crete walls, but rather to apply a simple white lime slurry wash. The ar­chi­tect wanted to give the build­ing in­te­rior the char­ac­ter of a work­shop or in­dus­trial hall – it was not to feel too fin­ished or mu­seum-like. ‘Both as a curator and as a visitor, you feel more free in the spaces this way,’ she ex­plains. Her in­spi­ra­tion comes from museums that have been created from empty in­dus­trial build­ings. To follow this aes­thetic into the details, Hanada col­lab­o­rated with FSB to develop a special version of the FSB 1147 door handle. Known as the ‘Wittgen­stein handle’ for its de­signer, Ludwig Wittgen­stein, it fea­tures in the Bauhaus Museum with a spe­cially de­vel­oped finish.

The ir­reg­u­larly tex­tured alu­minium is rem­i­nis­cent of handle blanks that are only part of the way through the man­u­fac­tur­ing process. The ar­chi­tect also had the grip section ex­tended to achieve the right pro­por­tions for the three-me­tre-tall museum doors. ‘FSB was really ac­com­mo­dat­ing of my wishes. The em­ploy­ees un­der­stood my request and sup­ported the process with such pa­tience,’ Hanada says.