Dezeen Magazine

Bauhaus opens its dorms to paying guests

News: visitors to the museum at the Dessau campus of the Bauhaus can now spend the night in the dormitories of the former German Modernist design school (+ slideshow).

Reconstructed room at Studio Building, Bauhaus Dessau
Reconstructed room in the Studio Building at Bauhaus Dessau

Guests can book accommodation in the Studio Building, designed by Walter Gropius, once occupied by architecture and design students at the Bauhaus campus in Dessau, Germany, which is now a museum dedicated to the movement.

Reconstructed room at Studio Building, Bauhaus Dessau. Photo by Yvonne Tenschert
Reconstructed room

Visitors stay in one of the 28 rooms in the building, which were once let to junior masters and promising students.

Reconstructed room at Studio Building, Bauhaus Dessau
Reconstructed room

Previous inhabitants include Marcel Breuer, Josef Albers, Erich Consemüller, Herbert Bayer, Franz Ehrlich, Walter Peterhans, Hannes Meyer and Joost Schmidt, plus Marianne Brandt, Gertrud Arndt, Gunta Stölzl and Anni Albers on the "ladies floor".

Marianne Brandt room at Studio Building, Bauhaus Dessau
Marianne Brandt room

The 24-square-metre studio flats are starkly decorated and minimally furnished. Boarders have to use the communal bathrooms and showers like the residents in the 1920s would have done.

Marianne Brandt room at Studio Building, Bauhaus Dessau
Marianne Brandt room

One single room has been accurately reconstructed with the original furnishings, while others have been kitted-out with work by their previous occupants.

Personalised studio of Josef Albers, Bauhaus Dessau
Josef Albers room

Prices start from €35 per night for a single room, while a double room on a Friday or Saturday night costs €60.

Personalised studio of Franz Ehrlich, Bauhaus Dessau
Franz Ehrlich room

The Bauhaus school was founded by Modernist German architect Gropius in 1919 and was originally located in Weimar.

Studio building (Prellerhaus) by Walter Gropius, 1925/26 - view from east. Photo by Silvia Höll
Studio Building (Prellerhaus) by Walter Gropius, 1925/26 – view from east. Photo by Silvia Höll

The campus was relocated to Dessau in 1925, where the iconic listed building was constructed in the Modernist style. The school was then moved again to Berlin in 1932 before closing down in 1933.

Visitor on a balcony of the studio building (Prellerhaus), Gropius 1925/26
Visitor on a balcony of the Studio Building

Photographs are courtesy of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and are all by Yvonne Tenschert unless otherwise stated.

Studio Building (Prellerhaus) of Bauhaus building Dessau, Walter Gropius 1925/26. View from south-east
Studio Building