Structures and Materials Individual Report

Dessau

The Bauhaus Report

BA Architecture Level 4 ARC4014 Structures and Materials Individual Report 12769252 Sahra Afsar

Introduction This report will examine Gropius Walter’s Dessau Bauhaus in Germany as a case study. This examination will allow a better understanding of the technological systems applied into the complex as well as the thorough examination of the structural strategy and materials used to create the building.

The report will first look into the architect and the purpose of his building.

This information will then be followed by the analysation of the structure and the materials through the use of text and visuals.

The Architect Walter Gropius was born in Berlin in 1883 and studied architecture at the Technical Institute in Munich, Germany in 1903 and Berlin in 1904. He was a German American architect and an educator who majorly influenced the development of modern architecture. As well as the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany, Gropius executed a number of other projects, including the USA embassy building in Athens and Harvard Graduate Centre.

Architectural Concept The building is Gropius’s representation of the modern movement; functional open spaces and the innovative usage of new materials and new methods of construction. The complex is structured using reinforced concrete, a primary construction material that was uncommon and new during that time.

The glass, curtain-wall facade reflects the function behind the elevation, emphasising the mechanical nature of the architecture, blurring the lines between the exterior and the interior space. Structure within glass was a new concept which became popular.

BA Architecture Level 4 ARC4014 Structures and Materials Individual Report 12769252 Sahra Afsar

Bauhaus Dessau shows Le Corbusier’s architectural principles dictating his technique for modern methods of design. These ‘Five Points of New Architecture’ are:  The replacing of walls with a grid of reinforced concrete columns or ‘Pilotis’ to bear the structural load of the two-storey bridge.

  

The floor plan is very open as the structural wall of the workshop and pilotis under the bridge allows a free, open space.

The free design of the façade Horizontal windows keeping the building light and ventilated.



The flat roof that can be walked on, covered with asphalt tiles.

The Building BA Architecture Level 4 ARC4014 Structures and Materials Individual Report 12769252 Sahra Afsar

The Bauhaus building is located in Dessau, Germany. It covers approximately 32,450 metres (squared) and contains may hallmark features, including a steel-frame construction and a glass curtain wall. The reinforced concrete structure is exposed through the windows. The building was designed by Walter Gropius, commissioned by the city of Dessau and it was completed in 1926.

Ground Floor Plan

First Floor Plan

The functions of the space are split into sections; A glass-fronted, threestorey workshop and a three-storey vocational school connected together by a two-storey bridge and a five-storey studio apartment consisting of 28 studio flats with an area of 20 metres (squared). Each flat contains its own small balcony; a concrete slab extending into the open space.

BA Architecture Level 4 ARC4014 Structures and Materials Individual Report 12769252 Sahra Afsar

The accommodation building and the workshop are connected by a onestorey building. The Bauhaus is designed as an asymmetrical, pinwheel plan, giving the building its functional efficacy and aesthetic coherence.

From aerial view, the layout resembles forms of airplane propellers.

Airplane propellers were largely manufactured in Dessau during that time.

The Structure and Materials The technical construction of the building is a design of the latest technology development. This includes a skeleton of reinforced concrete and steel with bricks, glass curtain-walls, mushroom shaped ceilings and a roof covered with asphalt tiles. There is no definite frontal faรงade.

Transparency and connections of bridges makes it difficult to grasp the whole complex for a single viewpoint.

Reinforced concrete is embedded with steel in such a way that the two materials act together in resisting forces. The compressive stress in the concrete structure is absorbed by the reinforcing steel. The concrete protects the steel from corrosion.

Reinforced concrete is extremely durable, low in maintenance and has good thermal mass Steel framework consists of horizontal beams and vertical columns welded together in a rectilinear grid. The beams resist load applied to their axis and the columns transfer compressive load. It is commonly used in civil engineering projects such as building foundations and structures.

"One of the outstanding achievements of the new constructional technique has been the abolition of the separating function of the wall.

Instead of making the walls the element of support, as in a brick-built house, our new space-saving construction transfers the whole load of the structure to a steel or concrete framework. Thus, the role of the walls BA Architecture Level 4 ARC4014 Structures and Materials Individual Report 12769252 Sahra Afsar

becomes restricted to that of mere screens stretched between the upright columns of this framework to keep out rain, cold, and noise. ...Systematic technical improvement in steel and concrete, and nicer and nicer calculation of their tensile and compressive strength, are steadily reducing the area occupied by supporting members.”

Another feature of the structure is the glass wall. The three-storey workshop front is a non-structural glass façade, separating the interior and exterior. The glass supports its own weight and transfers other loads imposed onto them back to the primary structure of the complex. The curtain wall consists of a lightweight steel frame enclosed within.

The main purpose of the curtain-glass wall is to maximise lighting and for the conditioning of the temperature within the building.

The glass facades are not fitted into rigid, supporting frames. Rather, the wrap around the building, giving an crystalline translucence.

This, in turn, naturally leads to a progressively bolder (i.e. Wider) opening up of the wall surfaces, which allows rooms to be much better lit. It is, therefore, only logical that the old type of window—a hole that had to be hollowed out of the full thickness of a supporting wall—should be giving place more and more to the continuous horizontal casement, subdivided by thin steel mullions, characteristic of the New Architecture. And as a direct result of the growing preponderance of voids over solids, glass is assuming an ever-greater structural importance. In the same way the flat roof is superseding the old penthouse roof with its tiled or slated gables.

For its advantages are obvious: (1) light normally shaped top-floor rooms instead of poky attics, darkened by dormers and sloping ceilings, with their almost utilizable corners; (2) the avoidance of timber rafters, so often the cause of fires; (3) the possibility of turning the top of the house to practical account as a sun loggia, open-air gymnasium, or children's playground; (4) simpler structural provision for subsequent additions, whether as extra stories or new wings; (5) elimination of unnecessary surfaces presented to the action of wind and weather, and therefore less need for repairs; (6) suppression of hanging gutters, external rain-pipes, etc., that often erode rapidly. With the development of air transport the architect will have to pay as much attention to the bird's-eye perspective of his houses as to their elevations.

Glass is a transparent material. The texture is hard and brittle and made of liquid sand. The raw materials are heated until they reach a point when they are entirely fused.

BA Architecture Level 4 ARC4014 Structures and Materials Individual Report 12769252 Sahra Afsar

The roof is covered in asphalt tiles. A mix of asphalt cement and aggregates, asphalt provides a safe and durable surface. It distributes load through deflection.

The utilization of flat roofs as 'grounds' offers us a means of reacclimatizing nature amidst the stony deserts of our great towns; seen from the skies, the leafy house-tops of the cities of the future will look like endless chains of hanging gardens."

Conclusion This report has examined Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus building which is located at Gropiusallee 38, 06846 Dessau, Germany. It was built as a school of arts and crafts for The Bauhaus founded in 1919.

The technological system implemented to the structure and the structural methods that uphold the completion of the architecture have been investigated in order to gain a better understanding of the building.

The Bauhaus Dessau is a building of high significance as it uses a structural method which was quite uncommon during that time. The demonstration of new and better methods of construction received positive responses and gained vast approval for the modern movement. “…Architects, sculptors, painters, we all must return to manual labour! Let us establish, therefore, a new confederate of artisans, free from that arrogance which divides one class from another and which seeks to erect an insurmountable barrier between the craftspeople and the artists! We long for, we develop and together we construct the new building of the future, which will accommodate everything- architecture, sculpture and painting- in one entity and which will rise to the sky by the hands of a million artisans, a crystal-clear symbol of a new faith which has arrived…”

BA Architecture Level 4 ARC4014 Structures and Materials Individual Report 12769252 Sahra Afsar

References WikiArquitectura. (2019). Bauhaus building in Dessau - Data, Photos & Plans – WikiArquitectura.

John Desmond Ltd. (2019). Walter Gropius in Dessau Part I - John Desmond Ltd..

Www-bcf.usc.edu. (2019) Griffiths, A. (2019). Walter Gropius designed school in Dessau to reflect the Bauhaus values.

Journal, J. (2019). Building on 80 Years of the Bauhaus in Dessau.

Designingbuildings.co.uk. (2019). Glass for buildings - Designing Buildings Wiki.

Gropius, W. (1974). Bauhausbauten Dessau. Mainz: Kupferberg.

All Images - WikiArquitectura. (2019). Bauhaus building in Dessau - Data, Photos & Plans – WikiArquitectura.

BA Architecture Level 4 ARC4014 Structures and Materials Individual Report 12769252 Sahra Afsar