With the landscape sheathed in thick white snow, the red, yellow and blue of the signboard stood out like a beacon. It was the guidepost for the Bauhaus-Archiv/Museum für Gestaltung (Bauhaus Archives/Museum for Design), which housed ideas and physical objects from the most influential German modernist art movement of the 20th century (see below).

The signboard embodied many aspects of the Bauhaus. Besides the bright primary colours, it sported a cubic form and lower-case Bauhaus typography, thus showcasing some of the movement’s underlying principles of geometry and simplification.

From the long walkway leading to the entrance, the building’s unique silhouette was striking. The silhouette was also almost impossible to describe, which was where its detailing in the Berlin Senate’s List of Monuments came in useful.

Basically, the structure comprised rows of conjoined end-sections of what would normally be industrial sheds. The whole was laid out in an uneven ‘H’ – impossible to figure out on the ground – and linked by walkways.

The effect was deliberately sculptural and the idea was also to create a harmonious whole with the neighbouring neo-rennaissance villa which was visible through the rows.

The building’s original designs were by the Bauhaus founder, architect Walter Gropius. But he died before construction commenced. Two architects revised and saw the completion of the current building, which opened in 1979: Alexander Cvijanovi, who had worked with Gropius, and Berliner Hans Bandel.

Inside the building, the exhibits exemplified the wide range of fields, expertise and exponents under the Bauhaus umbrella. Documents, photos and works focused on the ‘classics’ in furniture, graphics, ceramics, theatre, painting and textiles, among other fields.

The Bauhaus had its foundations as a school (formally the Staatliches Bauhaus), which moved to different buildings throughout its 14-year existence. A highlight of the archive/museum was a model of the second building complex in which the school was housed.

Considered a seminal example of Bauhaus architecture, the school complex was designed by Gropius. The model allowed for the appreciation from above and as a whole, of all the different forms Gropius employed to serve the different functions of the spaces.

The original in Dessau still stands and serves today as a Bauhaus research and teaching centre as well as experimental design workshop.

Another exhibit highlight was the Wassily chair. Its use of bent tubular steel and canvas was a then startling departure from the convention of clunky club chairs.

Designed in 1925 by furniture designer, architect and Gropius protégé, Marcel Breuer, it was produced in the Staatliches Bauhaus’ furniture workshop, “one of the first workshops to accept the need for standardisation for the purposes of industrial production”.

The chair has been in continuous production since the 1950s.

To accommodate increasing numbers of visitors and to showcase more of its collection, which is the world’s largest Bauhaus collection, the museum portion will move to a new building which is being constructed next to the current building. It will do this by 2019, the centenary of the founding of the Bauhaus. The current building will serve as an archive and library. ω