A new Bauhaus museum is opening in Weimar to celebrate the school's centenary

Next month, marking 100 years since the founding of the world renowned school of art and design, the Klassik Stiftung Weimar will open the new Bauhaus Museum in one of the city’s emerging cultural quarters. Designed by Berlin-based architect Heike Hanada, it will be exhibiting the world’s oldest Bauhaus collection. The groups of works include pieces by designers such as Willhelm Wagenfeld, Carl Jacob Jucker, Marianne Brandt, Marcel Breuer, Paul Klee,Lászlo Moholy-Nagy, Mies van der Rohe and the Ludewig Collection.

Following a three-year construction period, the museum will open with an exhibition revolving around a central theme of contemporary and futuristic ways of living together, first put forward in a speech in 1924 by the school’s founder and one of the pioneers of Modernism, Walter Gropius, where he asked “how will we live, how will we settle, what form of community do we want to aspire to?” This question is central to the ethos of Bauhaus, where it is applied to all stages of design and development.

Hanada herself taught at the Bauhaus University of Weimar. After setting up an architecture firm in Tokyo in the 90s, the German architect returned home to take up her role at the university, which specialises in the artistic and technical fields. Later founding another architectural practice in Berlin, Hanada went on to achieve success in various competitions such as the Stockholm City Library Extension in 2008. Eventually beating out over 530 other architects from around the world, she then won the Bauhaus Museum Weimer contract with her elegant, concrete design.

Her vision for the space, which is dedicated to the early days of Bauhaus, was a monolithic cube supported from beneath by a concrete base. Lined with layers of opaque glass on the outside and lit by 24 rows of LED lights that accentuate the building’s features, the museum is a modest creation that lends itself to the Bauhaus school’s value of simple yet effective design.

The Bauhaus Museum Weimar will open on 6 April 2019.