by Tanja Pabelick, 20.07.2009
From the point of view of architectural theory, labor offices, as functional public buildings, belong to the category of profane architecture. And in most cases, their organization results in a functionalism devoid of any aesthetics: bureaucratic madness all too often resides in small offices behind narrow long corridors or manifests itself in large waiting halls with whirring numbering machines. The old Dessau employment office, designed by Walter Gropius in 1928, was intended to put an end to congested authorities with a well thought-out spatial concept. Instead of a dead-end floor plan, the former director of the Bauhaus designed a dynamic circuit that automatically guided job seekers through all the stations of the office.
The history of employment offices is still young. Barely more than 100 years ago, the first "Arbeitnachweis" - as today's "Agentur für Arbeit" was still called at the time - opened in Berlin. These centrally organized placement offices were more or less the downside of industrialization and the economic upswing and harbingers of the great world economic crisis that struck in 1929. In 1927, when the decision was made to build a new employment office in Dessau, no one had any idea of this. The rising unemployment figures were interpreted as an inevitable consequence of mechanization and rationalization and understood as the dawn of a new era in which machines and assembly lines would automate handicrafts and manual labor - the birth of the machine age. At the same time, more and more people were moving to the cities in search of work, and in 1925 the unemployment figures in Germany were approaching the two-and-a-half million mark. Those who applied for work faced a lot of competition and had to reckon with long waiting times at the relevant offices, which were soon no longer able to cope organizationally with the new demands.
Rationalization "by official means"
When the closed competition for the new employment office in Dessau was announced in 1926, the development of a special type of building for job placement was a completely new construction task. Hugo Häring, Max Taut and Walter Gropius were invited to submit their designs. In the end, the decision was made in favor of the solution of the first Bauhaus director, who envisioned a flat circular building with a recessed building block. A thoroughly functional building that fits into the urban context through its proportion, access and design, while at the same time restructuring the authority and its processes through its internal organization. In this way, Gropius had met one of the main concerns of the city of Dessau, which had wanted the needs of job seekers to be handled efficiently with as few officials as possible. In addition, the number of daily visitors was subject to great fluctuations, and Gropius regulated the flows by routing them without intersections.
Streams of people in the official arteries
Centrally located in the city on a landscaped square, five entrances welcomed the various work groups, such as clerks, metalworkers or higher officials. At the same time, the building was divided into a "male section" and a "female section," with a disproportionately smaller area for women seeking work. However, a sliding barrier between the two sectors allowed for a dynamic response to changing workloads by expanding or shrinking the space. The rest of the floor plan also bears witness to Gropius' enthusiasm for functional architecture, which in its consistent organization is almost reminiscent of industrial factory processes: once the job seeker had entered the semicircular building, he first landed in a waiting room from which two offices branched off. Here he was advised in private by an employee of the office and - if he was lucky - also placed. This was a novelty, because in most of the "Arbeitsnachweisen" at that time there were large counter halls where all available jobs were loudly proclaimed. The exit from the offices led to the inner hallway, also semicircular, to the cashier's office and to the two exits that were located at the back of the building. Because the floor plan incorporated the office's flow and connected all the stations in sequence, the path through the building and the processing of the request was a circuit without duplication of paths. The interior design and furnishings were taken from the Bauhaus workshops, so that in addition to tables, there were classics such as Wilhelm Wagenfeld's glass table lamp and Bauhaus door handles.
New building: Shed roof and steel skeleton
The appearance and construction of the Office of Labor borrow from the architecture of industrial functional buildings. From the outside, the steel skeleton building is clad in mustard-colored clinker and has no windows - only a band of windows running along the ridge and the shed roofs provide an even incidence of light in the interior spaces. A lighting solution that makes the rooms very bright but did not meet with the approval of all contemporary users. After three years of operation, the head of the "Arbeitsnachweis" stated that the skylight had "certain disadvantages in terms of the atmospheric effect on the employees. And so, a short time later, the outer walls of the arched building were broken through and additional windows were inserted, and the walls opposite the desks were painted in cheerful colors and lightened up with pictures.
Walter Gropius' Labor Office is the only Bauhaus building in Dessau to have survived the Nazi period and World War II relatively undamaged. And this despite the fact that in Nazi times, people had repeatedly been outraged by the "circus-like building in a decidedly Bolshevik style." A few years ago, the old employment office was renovated in accordance with the preservation order - but the subsequently installed windows were retained. Today the house accommodates the seat of the "Office for order and traffic" and can be visited during its opening times also from the inside.
PHOTOGRAPHY Scientific Picture Archive for Architecture
Scientific Picture Archive for Architecture
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