hannes meyer

-Hannes Meyer, the son of an architect, began his architectural career in 1905 with training as a mason and construction draughtsman in Basel. He also attended construction courses at the vocational school there.

-n 1916, he became the office manager for the Munich architect Georg Metzendorf, for whom he worked on the planning of the Krupp Margarethenhöhe housing estate in Essen.

-Designed by Hannes Meyer and Hans Wittwer, the school of the ADGB (Federation of German Trade Unions) in Bernau near Berlin is still considered to be a paradigmatic example of functional architecture. The architectural style of the school, built in 1930 for union functionaries, corresponds with that of an industrial facility in that it dispenses entirely with extraneous details.e experimented in 1926/27 with constructivist forms and functionalist methods

-In 1927, Hannes Meyer arrived at the Bauhaus Dessau with his business partner Hans Wittwer and assumed a post as director of the newly established building department. 

-For Hannes Meyer, building, as the design of the human environment, was “based on society”. The goal, the “harmonious organisation of our society”, was therefore to be achieved through “life-supporting design”. Meyer represented the standpoint that the Bauhaus had abandoned its idea of designing “for the people”: most of the Bauhaus products were already expensive and therefore reserved for an exclusive group of buyers. As a result, Meyer‘s new slogan was: “The people’s needs instead of the need for luxury!”

In 1949, he returned to Europe. His hopes of participating in the reconstruction of the war-torn cities were dashed, and he returned to his homeland of Switzerland, where he was unable to realise any further projects.

Hannes Meyer, who is also referred to as the “unknown Bauhaus director”, was always too Communist for some and too bourgeois for others. Only in retrospect does it become clear that he probably had a stronger influence on the Bauhaus than Gropius may have wanted to believe.