Workers' Housing, Dessau, Germany


Related people
Zachary Snyder (photographer)
Walter Gropius (architect)
Date
1926-1928
Description
Working towards a practical solution to the difficulty of realizing low-cost apartments for the masses, the city of Dessau commissioned Walter Gropius with the construction of 314 single-family units. "Three different house types with surface areas of [74, 70, and 57 square meters] were built in different variants..." These cubes, "put back-to-back, make semidetached houses, and are combined in groups of from four to twelve units. The facades are divided by vertical and horizontal rows of windows..." "The construction of the houses was the result of the need to economize: the load bearing walls are made of prefabricated and inexpensive hollow slag-concrete blocks; the ceilings with reinforced concrete beams. The construction work itself was precisely planned in order to avoid idle time." -above selections from the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, www.bauhaus-dessau.de Keywords: Germany, Saxony-Anhalt, Halle, Dessau, Siedlung Dessau Torten, housing, homes, low-cost, budget, affordable, experimental, ribbon windows, horizontal windows.
Style/Period
1920s (1920 - 1929)
Material
concrete block
concrete