{"id":195070,"date":"2022-04-05T16:52:50","date_gmt":"2022-04-05T20:52:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interiordesign.net\/?post_type=id_project&p=195070"},"modified":"2023-02-16T17:50:49","modified_gmt":"2023-02-16T22:50:49","slug":"inside-walter-gropiuss-20th-century-house-in-jena-germany","status":"publish","type":"id_project","link":"https:\/\/interiordesign.net\/projects\/inside-walter-gropiuss-20th-century-house-in-jena-germany\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Walter Gropius’s 20th-century House in Jena, Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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New linoleum reproducing the house\u2019s original flooring. Photography by Michel Figuet\/Living Inside.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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April 5, 2022<\/p>\n\n\n

Words: <\/span>Alan Powers<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Inside Walter Gropius’s 20th-century House in Jena, Germany<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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Although Walter Gropius continued his professional architectural practice after founding the Bauhaus\u2014the legendary design school he ran in Weimar, Germany, between 1919 and 1928\u2014there were only six private residences among the projects he completed before leaving the country permanently in the mid \u201930\u2019s. One of them, a villa in the nearby university town of Jena, was a 1924 commission from physics professor Felix Auerbach and his wife, suffragist Anna Silbergleit. Art and music lovers\u2014Edvard Munch\u2019s 1906 portrait of Auerbach, a gift from Silbergleit, hung in their new home\u2014they embraced the modular system Gropius was developing, which treated the villa as if it was a three-dimensional composition made of interpenetrating volumes or \u201cBaukasten im Grossen\u201d (Big Construction Kit), as he dubbed them. Thus, a two-story volume containing the main living areas interlocks with a taller structure housing service functions, with an asymmetrical shift between them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The German-American architect and founder of the Bauhaus, photographed at the school in 1926 by Lucia Moholy, one of the institution\u2019s most important early documenters. Image courtesy of Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The house reflects another preoccupation of the early Bauhaus: the use of color as an essential element in architecture. One student, Alfred Arndt (1896-1976), who had just completed his journeyman\u2019s exam in wall painting, was hired to design a color palette for the villa\u2019s interiors. Putting theory into practice, Arndt applied color \u201cconstructively,\u201d not restricting hues to individual wall or ceiling planes but allowing them to flow across room surfaces so they created an immersive experience of transitions and contrasts within the larger spaces. Arndt\u2019s original scheme, 37 mostly pastel colors in all, was obscured over the years. Fortunately, the house was acquired in 1994 by Barbara Happe and Martin Fischer\u2014an academic couple with a commitment to design as strong as the original owners\u2019\u2014and they set about meticulously restoring the dilapidated villa, including reinstating its original rainbow colors. This was possible since Arndt\u2019s detailed plans survive, and the results vividly refute the common misperception that Bauhaus interiors were all gray and white. Fischer and Happe\u2019s 2003 book documenting the project\u2014The Auerbach House by Walter Gropius with Adolf Meyer\u2014has been recently updated and reissued. As they say, \u201cWe could not live in white-painted rooms anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Look at the Interiors by Bauhaus Founder Walter Gropius<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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A Rikizo Fukao painting and a Le Corbusier chair in the Auerbach house, a 1924 villa by Walter Gropius (1883-1969), in Jena, Germany, restored by Barbara Happe and Martin Fischer. Photography by Michel Figuet\/Living Inside.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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A Louis Poulsen pendant fixture hanging before a Peter Halley acrylic on canvas in the dining room. Photography by Michel Figuet\/Living Inside.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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High\u00adlighting architectural form, the color scheme by then Bauhaus student, later head of the school\u2019s interior design department, architect Alfred Arndt. Photography by Michel Figuet\/Living Inside.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The villa\u2019s interlocking volumes, an early example of Gropius\u2019s \u201cgiant building blocks\u201d approach. Photography by Michel Figuet\/Living Inside.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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In the primary bedroom, a new carpet based on designs by Bauhaus student Gertrud Hantschk, later Arndt\u2019s wife. Photography by Michel Figuet\/Living Inside.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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New linoleum reproducing the house\u2019s original flooring. Photography by Michel Figuet\/Living Inside.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n