Lessons in Clean Living; The first permanent museum dedicated to the Bauhausmovement opens on the site in Germany where it was born.

Byline: Michael Levitin

Bauhaus Redux

As part of the new Bauhaus permanent exhibit in Dessau, Germany, the historic home of Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee is surprisingly sparse. Aside from a few photos of the middle-aged artists posing with rakish smiles, the unadorned, recently refurbished building where they once lived and worked serves as a testament to the movement's functional "design for living" philosophy. Nestled among pine trees alongside the half-dozen other Masters' Houses that architect and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius built in the 1920s, the angular building features sprawling windows, spacious workshops, wine-red floors and pastel-green stairwells. It is the radiant symbol of an avant-garde movement whose activity was cut short--and one that people are now clamoring to rediscover.

With "Bauhaus Dessau: Workshop of Modernism," Germany looks anew at the explosive seven-year period between 1925 and 1932 that produced one of the seminal architecture and design movements of the 20th century. Founded in the democratic, anti-academic post-World War I atmosphere of Weimar in 1919, the movement shifted in 1925 to Dessau, where it flourished under a central tenet: that the ultimate aim of all creative activity is building. It celebrated a communal--almost utopian--philosophy that blended practical, utilitarian design with an organic esthetic aimed at bringing man into harmony with the modern, industrial age. There was controversy from the get-go; local authorities claimed the buildings "scarred" the landscape, while the Nazis called the structures "un-German" with "culturally bolshevist, Marxist-Jewish intentions." They forced the movement to disband in 1933, and, under decades of communist leadership following the second world war, the buildings fell into disrepair.

Even as recently as 10 years ago, there ...