Dessau Employment Office

As a result of a restricted competition with Bruno Taut and Hugo Häring as opponents, the winner Walter Gropius built the Dessau Employment Office. Opening in 1929, the building was designed in two parts, a one-storey, semi-circle service section which would serve the seasonal changing flow of the public and a two-storey cubicle office structure for administrational use. The service unit was laid out with six separate entrances and a shedded roof made of a steel structure. The roof permitted a large amount of daylight in the interior passages and offices. Career guidance, job placement and cash payouts of unemployment support were carried out here. The interior design of the office was partially executed by the Bauhaus workshops. Façades clad with yellow clinker stones and a steel skeleton were results of Gropius´ concept of a functional architecture and recall his earlier buildings, like the Fagus Shoe Tree Factory in Alfeld from 1911.