Bauhaus: UNESCO World Heritage

The outstanding universal value of the pedagogical ideas and constructed buildings was first acknowledged by UNESCO in 1996, when the Bauhaus and its Sites in Weimar and Dessau were included on the World Heritage List.

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee, at its 41st session in Krakow, Poland, has now resolved to expand the World Heritage Site of the Bauhaus to include the architecture built under the guidance of the second Bauhaus director, Hannes Meyer: the Houses with Balcony Access built in 1929 in Dessau and the ADGB Trade Union School which opened in 1930 in Bernau near Berlin. As a result, the World Heritage Site of the Bauhaus will comprise buildings in three federal states – Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg – which drafted the application together under the auspices of the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt. It comprises in Weimar the former School of Art, the former School of Applied Arts and the Haus am Horn, in Dessau the Bauhaus building, the Masters’ Houses and the Houses with Balcony Access and in Bernau near Berlin, the former ADGB Trade Union School.

Hannes Meyer, who succeeded Walter Gropius as director of the Bauhaus (1928–1930), realised the concept of collective work on a building project in the course of training in the Bauhaus building department. According to Meyer’s concept, the planning process was informed by a scientific design methodology and a functional-economical design with a social objective. The Houses with Balcony Access in Dessau testify to the significant contribution made by the Bauhaus to the construction of social housing in the inter-war years. The ADGB Trade Union School in Bernau bei Berlin documents the design methodology for a complex construction programme integrated in the surrounding landscape.

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