Reinterpreted: Bauhaus Masters' houses

Bruno Fioretti Marquez designed a series of "New Masters' Houses" in Dessau. The buildings follow the Bauhaus principles of squares and right angles, but without simply copying the founding fathers of modernist architecture.

"The new Dessau Masters' Houses challenge the relevancy of the Bauhaus legacy," says Christian Holl. The houses promote a critical look at what reconstruction can do, "and where it reaches the limits of what it pretends to do, which is to undo the loss."

From 1925 to 1932, the Bauhaus art school founded by Walter Gropius had its home in Dessau - until the Nazis closed the school. It moved to Berlin as a private institution - only to dissolve again two years later, again under pressure from the Nazis. Many Bauhaus members fled the country, and the Bauhaus ideas went around the world.

Broad spectrum

Once again, the German Architecture Museum (DAM) presents "the best buildings in and from Germany" in its 33rd yearbook," including sketches by the award winner, and 22 other projects in Germany and abroad, for instance in Burkina Faso and Myanmar.

The spectrum, the museum says, is "enjoyably broad": from unconventional single-family residences in the countryside to buildings that go gentle on resources, and are strong on recycling building materials. Other projects included in the yearbook are a warehouse that has been turned into a youth center and a subterranean concert hall in a town in the Bavarian Forest.