Employment Office: Models of engineering urban life.

    Design Walter Gropius / Built 1927-28
    Commissioned by the municipality of Dessau and the
    Reichsanstalt für Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenunterstützung
    Wochenklausur, Wien

Completed in 1929, the Employment Office in Dessau was seen as a prototype for the optimal spatial organisation of the administrative processes of job placement. The semi-circular flat-roofed building withstood the surges of destruction in the city, and soon found itself surrounded by the “New Dessau” of the 1960s. Later on, a twelve-storey reinforced concrete building came to dominate the area. The building’s renovation post-1990 incensed many, yet the juxtaposition of two different kinds of modernism at this location is a lesson in itself.

Pictures of the Workshop