Bauhaus Dessau Architectural Model

This architectural object is inspired by the Bauhaus Dessau — the building Walter Gropius designed in 1926 to house the most influential art and design school of the twentieth century, and one of the founding monuments of modern architecture.

This model captures the southern stair block façade: the BAUHAUS lettering extruded vertically down its side. It directly expresses the school's identity in architectural form — not as applied signage, but as three-dimensional relief, the letters projecting from the wall and casting shadow as the light moves across them.

Read the full Bauhaus Dessau architecture guide

 

The southern stair block façade, distilled into form

 

The BAUHAUS lettering running vertically down the stair block's face is the composition's defining moment — the school naming itself in the same formal language as its architecture, bold and without apology.

This façade model focuses on the elements that give the elevation its character:

• the extruded BAUHAUS lettering, projecting from the façade as architectural form
• the disciplined geometry that makes this elevation immediately recognisable

Reduced to object form, the southern façade reads as a study in the Bauhaus principle of design without ornament — every element earning its place, nothing added that is not already doing work.

 

Why the Bauhaus Dessau works as an architectural model

 

The southern façade translates particularly well into object form because its power comes from depth and shadow rather than surface decoration. The extruded lettering create a composition that changes with the light — the same qualities that make the original elevation so compelling at full scale are exactly what give a plaster façade model its presence.

The BAUHAUS lettering is the model's centrepiece. At this scale, the letters read simultaneously as typography and as architecture — three-dimensional forms that belong to the façade as completely as the windows around them.

 

Craft, materials, and finish

 

Each Bauhaus Dessau model is cast in fine plaster and finished by hand in our studio in West Sussex. The finish is intentionally restrained, allowing light and shadow to articulate the projecting balconies and lettering in a way that echoes the taut, undecorated surfaces of the original building.

The result is an object that sits naturally on a shelf or desk, or displayed on a wall — at home in architectural and design interiors, studios, and workspaces. It appeals particularly to those with an interest in the Bauhaus, early modernism, and the history of twentieth-century design.

  

Product details

 

• Subject: Bauhaus Dessau, Dessau-Roßlau, Germany — southern façade
• Architect: Walter Gropius
• Completed: 1926
• Architectural style: Bauhaus / International Style
• Designed and made by: Chisel & Mouse

 

Also available: Bauhaus Dessau Mini – Entrance

 

The Bauhaus Dessau Mini – Entrance captures the main entrance elevation — a different face of the same building, with a more compressed character. Displayed together, the two models give a sense of the building's refusal of any single dominant façade.

 

Learn more about the Bauhaus Dessau

 

For a detailed exploration of the building's architecture, history, and influence on modernism, see our in-depth guide:

Bauhaus Dessau Architecture: Walter Gropius and the Building that Defined Modernism