Young & Ayata sign one of the two winning entries of the competition for the new Museum of Bauhaus Dessau, alongside with the glass boxed project of the Spanish practice González Hinz Zabala. The museum is born from the combination of units called "vessels", which are covered by a new pixeled high-tech system that gives them a unique urban image. The union of these elements seeks a continuous and open interior, which allows a great variety of exhibitions.
The project of the New York practice also determines the landscape integration of the museum: The building will rise over a park, resting on concrete legs set on specific points and hidden between the vegetation. Thus, the museum will be integrated into the city, allowing to walk beneath it and opening views to the park and to the immediate urban environment.
Above all, the final form is an open solution, a building which leaves room for the choice between dual realities, which can be understood by the visitor in different ways, reflecting the multiple character of the Bauhaus School.
Description of the Project by Young & Ayata.
Our proposal for the Bauhaus Museum Dessau aknowledges the tensions between the technichal and expressive factors of the Bauhaus through the design of a building as a collection of individual masses aggregated serially through a grid. We are calling these objects "vessels" as they allude to the crafted object of a vase or volumetric container. The vessels hover above the site on trunk-like legs, creating a light touch in the park and allowing passage underneath. The bellies of the vessels swell to touch each other along the gridded matrix creating an open continuous floor plan that connects the entire museum with a single floor. These combinations allow the building to fluctuate character between a huddle of singular objects, a sinuous coil of continuity, and a matrix of gridded repetition.
The main level plan is divided into two wings along anaxis perpendicular to the site corner. To one side is the sequence of permanent galleries devoted to the Bauhaus. To the other side are the temporary galleries. The center of the building acts as a hub or knuckle between the gallery programs.This space opens views out to the park and to the urban street corner with cafeteria and special exhibition functions which can double as an active event space when desired. From this knuckle it is possible also to go to the education workshops or the education event space. Above this central space is a mezzanine for the offices of the museum director and staff. This space has views down to the main floor as well as views out to the park and street corner through a series of small punched openings that filter through the cones like veins of marble.
The structure of the building has two primary systems: a single concrete slab raised on concrete legs, and a series of timber egg-crate vessel tops. The slab and legs create a stable lower level as a single system. On this table top of sorts the timber egg-crate cones rest fully on the edge of the slab and then behave as large box-beams when spanning over interior spaces.
The exterior of the vessels is clad with small dimension sintered glasstiles made from recycled car windshields. Each vessel has a different colored pattern that helps distinguish it from its immediate neighbors. The tiles are laid out through a digital scanning of a graphic pattern, breaking and sorting color to find a matching tile per pixel;these are then robotically assembled into sub panels, which are numbered and fit together to cover the surfaces. The surface effect is an optical fusion into an apparent solidity as a single vessel. This cladding can be considered an update on the relations between craft and technology prevalent within Bauhaus ideology. The digital scan breaks the surface into a modular grid reminiscent of Bauhaus graphic and textile designs. The robotic layout uses cutting-edge technology to translate these patterns into material systems.
