When the German city of Dessau – home of Bauhaus from 1925-1932 – was bombed in early 1945, the famous Director’s House by Walter Gropius and Moholy-Nagy’s Master House were reduced to rubble. After the Dessau Masters’ Houses, considered the epitome of the 20th century artists’ colony, had been restored to their original state in the 1990s, a debate began on the reconstruction of the two houses destroyed in the war. In 2010, after consultation with British architect David Chipperfield, the decision was made to recreate the Master Houses of Gropius and Moholy-Nagy using contemporary means, rather than rebuilding them 1:1. They have now been reconstructed on the basis of designs by the Berlin firm Bruno-Fioretti-Marquez, as innovative reductions and abstractions of the original houses. This volume describes the chequered history of the Dessau Masters’ Houses, presenting the reconstructed buildings for the first time in book form, with photographs by Armin Linke and Heidi Specker. New Masters' Houses in Dessau arrives courtesy of Spector Books.
