Glas | Concrete | Metal

When the workshop wing of the Bauhaus building opened in Dessau on December 4, 1926, it shone like a glass cube—an architectural manifestation of the New Building movement. The fascination, but also the skepticism, of the more than 1,000 guests stemmed not only from the unusual, windmill-shaped floor plan, but also from the innovative building materials that Walter Gropius used and with which the school’s workshops experimented creatively.

Nearly a century later, the exhibition Glass | Concrete | Metal in the historic workshop wing focuses precisely on these materials. It explores the close interconnections between Bauhaus work and the industrial history of the early 20th century and examines the often-overlooked material, economic, and technological foundations of the iconic building and its workshop production.

Through historical photographs, tools, documents, and equipment, the three-part exhibition offers insight into previously neglected aspects of Bauhaus history. It explores the shaping of this modern everyday aesthetic, as well as the manufacturing processes, production sites, working conditions, and raw material extraction hidden behind the smooth, clean surfaces of steel tubes or glass facades.
Glass | Concrete | Metal traces trade routes and resource flows that were embedded in deeply unequal colonial and imperial economic relations and geopolitics. The exhibition explores the disruptions, upheavals, and new beginnings associated with material innovations in the early 1920s—thereby drawing a connection to current debates on sustainability, resource justice, and global production conditions.