Großsiedlung Törten: a Bauhaus model estate in Dessau

After 1900 the city of Dessau in Saxony-Anhalt quickly grew into an important industrial centre on the Elbe. Expanding heavy industry lead to a sharp increase in demand for housing for both workers and personnel, especially from 1920 onwards. The first housing was provided by private developers and community groups (the Siedlerbewegung). The local authorities provided land especially for Siedlergesellschaften (Building Cooperatives), but also had small numbers of housing built. Improving infrastructure was part of the decision making process for allotting certain plots for development as new housing estates were used to realise important road infrastructure. After 1920 several estates with amenities were developed: Gartenstadt Askania (a true garden village), Siedlung Hohe Lache, Knarrberg-Siedlung, Reichsbahn-Siedlung, Neue Siedlung, two AGFA-Siedlungen and the Bauhaussiedlung.

After the Bauhaus school for Architecture and applied Arts had moved to Dessau from Weimar in 1925 the main teachers strived to realise buildings to better propagate their teachings. The Meisterhäuser (master houses) were built in 1926 on the edge of the city. These four villas -one detached, three semidetached- in a modernist idiom were designed with precast industrial concrete modules and sections by Walter Gropius with László Moholy-Nagy. The furniture and fittings were all designed by Marcel Breuer.

Near the village of Törten the new urban area of Dessau-Süd (Dessau South) was planned in the early 1920s. Between 1926 and ’28 the Bauhaussiedlung was built as a section of Dessau-Süd. The estate was never finished; the Laubenganghäuser (gallery flat buildings), finished in 1930 were the only part of the second building phase to be realised. The estate was conceived as a model estate of industrial construction at low cost with high comfort.

The houses and the layout were designed with changing seasons, influx of natural light, modern living for all ages and effective use of material and space. They have the typical cubist aesthetic with flat roofs. The back gardens are large in order to facilitate gardening and vegetable growing. The houses that were built come in a limited number of types. Most are low row houses that are arranged along 3 curved roads (Grossring, Mittelring and Kleinring). The middle-rise flat buildings were erected along the new thoroughfare to the village of Törten and further south on parallel streets. At the heart of the estate Gropius designed a Konsumgebäude -a cooperative supermarket and community hall in one. The estate also had several schools planned with the housing. Later a few shops sprang up in the 1930s section that was built in the traditionalist Stuttgarter Schule Style.

The Siedlung Törten has no iconic layout and is characterised by a considered piecemeal layout in several sections making the most of the sites available. The Bauhaus buildings that are listed monuments are shown in the lighter tone. At the centre, below the thoroughfare, the Konsum-building (K) stands, with a church (C) and a secondary school (S). The Laubenganghäuser (L) were built as a precursor to the planned southern section. At the north end of the first section two Bauhaus villas were built: Stahlhaus (SH) and Haus Fieger (HF).

Not all original Bauhaus buildings survive. The ones that do survive have sometimes been altered very unsympathetically. Only a few of the buildings have been restored. It is a real shame that this Unesco Heritage site looks so shabby and in places unsightly. All houses should be restored, including the front gardens as there are so few examples of early modernist housing estates.